[MUSIC] What is a milestone? The Oxford English Dictionary provides two definitions. One, a stone set beside a road to mark a distance in miles to a particular place. And two, a significant stage or event in the development of something. In the glossary of the Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, the Project Management Institute defines a milestone in this way. A significant point or event in a project, program, or portfolio. So you can see how the use of the term milestone works well with your project schedule. As you and your team progress along the path of work required for project completion, you will reach points where you have made some significant accomplishments. These accomplishments are in a sense similar to mile markers along your project journey. Let's look at an example. In this instance, we are opening a restaurant named Good for You. The restaurant will only use organic ingredients. Some of the important milestones that occur early in the project are to have the Good for You concept approved, to conduct a kickoff meeting, to have the charter approved, to have the initial permits approved, and to select the contractor. These are some of the significant events that mark our progress. None of these are detailed enough to be assignable work. They are not meant to be the assignable work. They are meant to report the end result of that work. For example, in order to get to the point where we can say we have selected a contractor, we need to know the requirements, what it is we want that contractor to do, we need to take those requirements and put together an RFP or request for proposal. We need to know how to score the RFP responses once they come back. We need to issue the RFP and wait for responses. We need to review the responses. And really, even those activities can benefit from additional breakdown. For the purpose of our discussion, they help us show the benefit of a milestone. The contractor selected milestone is the result of quite a bit of work. Not everybody needs to see all of the details. When having high level discussions about status, or showing stakeholders the big events that occur along the way to project completion, well defined milestones really help to create clear communications. Why don't you take a turn selecting some project milestones? Based on the list displayed, which one do you think is the project milestone? A, gather cost estimates. B, gather labor rates. C, complete labor budget. Or D, budget approved. All of these are important parts of gathering estimates and putting together budget. The labor budget is part of the total budget. The milestone is D, to have the budget approved. Now, try sequencing some activities, and then defining which one is the milestone. The milestone should be the last in the sequence. Now, take a look at these activities and list them in the order in which they occur. Again, placing that milestone last on the list. So we have A, walls completed. B, paint trim. C, hang drywall. And D, paint walls. This was a bit of a trick question because you might want to paint the trim and then the walls, or you might want to paint the walls and then the trim. But either way, your milestone is walls completed. When we worked on the network diagram, we didn't discuss milestones, we didn't add milestones. In your final version of your project schedule, please add milestones. These milestones should be connected to project activities using predecessors and successors. In this way, they are dependent upon the completion of specific project activities. In our example, the milestone Good for You Contractor Selected should be a successor to the activity Score RFP, received from candidate organizations. In turn, score RFP from candidate organizations is a successor to review RFP received from candidate organizations, which is a successor to issue RFP to candidate organizations. I'm going to stop there. I know you get the point. By the way, what type of chart is this? Is it A, a dependency chart. B, a Gantt chart. Or C, a network diagram? B, it's B, it is a Gantt chart. Now, if you want to discuss the flow of the early work in your new restaurant project, you have some milestones to help you. You can discuss the significant events in the life of your project, and show the clear plan. Save the detailed activities for those who are closest to the work. Milestone charts, like the one you see here, are popular graphics to be used to communicated project status. You will spend more time on project status in a future course.
