Milestones Overview

A milestone represents any significant event, goal, or gate in a project. Although milestones are considered a type of activity, they have zero duration. A project might have met an activity milestone, or it might still be progressing toward one. Any activity can be designated as a milestone, or connected to a milestone, no matter its relationship type (Start to Start, Start to Finish, Finish to Start, or Finish to Finish). Milestone details are shown, and can be edited, in the grid and detail windows of the Activities page.

Some examples of milestones in an office building addition project might include the following:

During project planning, you will want to identify the major milestones to help you monitor the project's progress. You can also assign an activity owner or a primary resource to a milestone. When you mark a milestone as complete, the weight is used to calculate the performance percent complete of all activities.

Enable the Gantt view to show milestone markers along a timeline. You can filter and include milestone start and finish dates in rollup calculations, such as WBS summaries, even if milestone activities lack explicit Start and Finish Dates displayed in activity rows. You can also enter Start and Finish date information when filtering by important dates, and during schedule health checks, to ensure your project schedule is progressing as planned.

Milestones can still be considered in calculations and rollups even if only one date is available. For example, if a WBS has a Start date designated as a milestone, but a Finish date is unknown, the system will infer that the Finish date is the latest Start date in rollups and summary calculations. If a WBS only has Finish milestones, the system will use its Earliest Finish date as its Start date.

Program Milestones

Program Milestones is a standard view found on the Activities page. This view enables you to see a high-level picture of how the projects within your program are progressing based on their milestones.

You can enable the view by selecting it from the View menu on the Activities page, setting it as active from the Manage Views panel, or by selecting Schedule from the Main Menu, and then selecting the Milestone Summary page at the program level.