“100 questions on project management” is a knowledge-based topic. Based on the Ones team’s rich practical experience and the positive feedback from customers, each issue will share a little project management knowledge. Please feel free to give feedback and ask questions

preface

In daily management work, project managers often feel various challenges from schedule management in the face of more and more complex R&D projects, increasing demand changes, progress out of control and other problems. Schedule management will directly affect whether the R&D project can be delivered on time on the basis of quality assurance.

In project schedule management, milestone is a part that cannot be ignored, because the setting of milestone can well let all stakeholders know the progress and direction of the project, and track the working progress of the collaboration within the process. Through milestone control, the key nodes and output of the project are grasped and controlled to achieve the project schedule target.

In this issue of “100 Questions in Project Management”, you can learn how to set milestones to control key points in your project schedule.

How do you set milestones for your project?

The key to setting milestones is to effectively break down the goals so that project members can clearly see the goals and feel the progress of the project, so that the product can be delivered smoothly.

Firstly, the product development process should be structured and divided into multiple stages such as demand analysis, product design, product development, quality testing, continuous integration and delivery. Then estimate the working hours and define the critical path. Finally, the key task completion points of each stage are selected to set up milestones and target deliverables.

1. Team discussion to reach consensus

Milestone setting requires project members to discuss the timing of the milestone and the team to agree on the final milestone, so that the milestone is effective.

2. Time estimation and critical path identification

The project manager can decompose the work structure based on the WBS, then estimate the corresponding work hours according to the difficulty of each module in the project, develop the resource calendar, divide the task level, and find the critical path that is most likely to cause the project delay.

3. Identify milestones

After working hours are estimated and the critical path is identified, the resulting path is plotted, each milestone marked, and the appropriate adjustments and changes are made in the order in which they occur. At the same time, a line is used to indicate the task level, extracting the time required for each stage. Combined with the project time node, the required delivery date is obtained, and the start and end time of each stage is backward to obtain the milestone time point of the project.

4. Identify milestone deliverables

After the milestone time point is set, you also need to set the target deliverables for the milestone. Identify milestone deliverables, assist project teams to review quality/defect status, and truly measure product performance compliance.

The above is the method of setting milestones in project management, but the progress control of project management is much more complicated in the actual process. In some large-scale projects, professional enterprise-level R and D management tools are needed to help us quickly dismantle the project and set milestones more effectively. Ones helps you easily, easily and quickly set milestones for your projects, enabling your organization to deliver products faster and better.

Milestone catalog.

1. Set milestones

Ones can set milestones for the project, show the complete plan and progress through the timeline, give the project delay warning, and help to monitor the implementation of the project in the late stage.

2. Milestone version comparison

Ones automatically records the historical version of the milestone plan, monitors the performance of the project by comparing versions, helps the team track the progress of the project and traces the schedule changes.

Set milestone deliverables

Ones supports setting target deliverables for milestones, uploads files and links directly to help project managers review phase results.

4. Take control of the project plan

ONES supports setting milestones in the project plan to help project managers clearly and effectively plan activities and track the progress of all projects.

Firstly, the product development process should be structured and divided into multiple stages such as demand analysis, product design, product development, quality testing, continuous integration and delivery. Then estimate the working hours and define the critical path. Finally, the key task completion points of each stage are selected to set up milestones and target deliverables. If you want to try ONES products, please visit the ONES website at https://ones.ai/ to make an appointment