Making Effective Milestones: Our Top 10 Tips

Every project starts with milestones but are we always setting effective milestones that actually benefit us?

Make Them Attainable

Your milestones should ideally take no longer than a month to complete and you should be able to see a clear path to achieving that. Remember milestones aren't goals.

Allocating Them

When making milestones make sure it's clear whose responsibility each will be to complete. Not assigning them to anyone can lead to people hoping someone else will handle that one.

Specify

Make your milestones specific. A vague milestone includes a vague idea of when it's completed. Define exactly what is required for this to be completed.

Focus on Progressing through the Project

Before writing any milestones consider what would get you significantly further progressed through the project. Anything that doesn't actually cause progression probably isn't worth making a milestone. Effective milestones should get you further towards your goal.

Make Them Measurable

If you can't actually measure whether you are close to reaching it or not then making it a milestone was pointless. Effective milestones should be easily & accurately measurable.

Make Them Significant

 Your milestones shouldn't be small parts of the project that don't get you a significant way towards completion. Consider when building a house, getting the roof on is a better milestone than fitting windows on the left side.

Tracking

Think about how long each milestone should take to complete without being too optimistic and note this down on a calendar. Use this to track your milestones progress in actual time rather than completed steps.

Think Them Through

When you make your milestones think through exactly what steps should be taken to complete it. It's more likely to be completed in good time if you have a clear plan and know exactly where to start.

Small

Yes milestones should be significant but they should also be small enough to have a completion date in sight. Milestones too big can also be overwhelming which can lead to procrastination.

Easy to Understand

Don't fill milestones with jargon and fancy words. They need to be as clear as possible to the people who need to complete them and when showing them to potential investors they might not understand obscure industry jargon or regional slang.