Create a Project Milestone: Mark the Progress and Accomplishments of Your Project

Key Points to Remember when Creating a Project Milestone

It may be challenging to create project milestones because there are lots of factors to consider such as the timeline, budget, resources, deliverables, and workforce. To make this task easier for you, you must first identify the goals of your project. Prioritize what must be completed first and once you identify what milestone must be started, the rest of the details will follow.

Start with Several Milestones at Once

It is best to work on milestones one at a time. Opening milestones all at the same time may be overwhelming for the team. It is best to start off with several ones and add another phase accordingly so that the members will know which work to prioritize.

Break Down the Tasks of the Milestone

Aside from prioritizing milestones, breaking down tasks is also another method to prevent workers from getting overwhelmed. Divide each milestone into tasks and arrange which must be started first so they work on one task at a time. This is also beneficial for you because you will be able to track their completed tasks easily and ensure that the quality of their work will not be compromised.

Monitor Progress with Visual Media

Taking videos and pictures of the project is a great way to keep track of its progress. This gives realistic evidence of how the project is progressing and is best used for comparison purposes of the ‘before and after’ scenario. You must also remember to back up the videos and images of the project sometimes to ensure that you have copies in case the original one gets deleted.

Ways to Present The Videos and Photos of Your Project

When you report about the project milestone, these visual media can serve as data you can present to your team to let them visualize the current status of the project. This is especially important to the higher-ups, stakeholders, and the rest of the team who are not able to visit the site of the project first hand but instead relies on project reports to keep them updated.

Create a Time Lapse

Working on a project, especially that of a long-term one, will require the presentation of numerous reports of the progress. This is needed to update the whole team and check if the project is advancing. Creating a video from still images is a wonderful way to showcase the progress and accomplishments of a project. The photos collected throughout the milestone will be put together and created as video, arranged at a faster rate. Time-lapse can edit hundreds of photos compiled for months and present it in a video clip with just a few seconds of duration.

Make an Accelerated Motion Video

This is a technique that will cause the image capture to result in an increased sense of speed. In accelerated motion, the slow process of a movement will be shown faster.

What is the difference between time-lapse and accelerated video?

The difference between time-lapse and accelerated video is basically with the original content. Time-lapse video is made from still images, while an accelerated video is originally a video that is accelerated. Both edited contents result in the same manner at a faster rate. 

Set a Realistic and Reasonable Deadline

One of the most crucial parts of a milestone is managing time. It is important to establish a deadline and a schedule for the team to follow through. You must be reasonable with setting dates of the deadlines by considering the factors that will affect the duration of the task. If you set the deadline too early, it may hurry and overburden your team members and the quality of the work may be compromised. On the other hand, if you set the deadline for too long, it could cost you more time and resources, and it may slow the progress.

Always discuss with your team the goals that need to be achieved and plan a timeline with them on when to start, and when the expected completion must be. The deadline will be the date to check and evaluate if the milestone has been successful or not, and if the goals were met or not.

Design a Gantt Chart or Follow a Template

A structured way to keep track of your milestones is by recording them through a Gantt chart. Insert a phase of your milestone in the graph, add specific details about it, and color code it for easier identification of progress. You may also make use of software tools that can automatically provide the Gantt chart, and the only thing left for you to do is insert the details of your milestone. Another way is to get an example of templates for various projects that are free for download through the internet.