Explains what project milestones are and milestones vs. phases
Project Milestones
Project milestones are critical or important points in your project marking either a key deliverable, a transition to a new phase or stage or a turning point or "milestone" within your project. Milestones and phases are two different things in iBE.net however if you want to link them together and define milestones the same as phases you can.
Click here to learn more about project phases.
An example of a project milestone for a system implementation project like the implementation of iBE.net in your company might be "Business requirements assessment" (aka design) vs. "System configuration and data load" (aka build) vs. "Core team and user test". Or at a higher level the system go-live might be your first milestone.
An example of a project milestone if you are building a house might be site work, foundations (concrete), framing, rough electrical, plumbing and HVAC, interior finish, carpentry and paint. You can really divide up your project however works best in your company.
Milestones are optional you do not require them to plan, manage or bill projects.
Milestones vs. Phases
Technically in iBE.net a project milestone is a task which is marked as a milestone via the task type settings. A phase is a property or field on the task to group tasks together. When you link milestones and phases together phases are automatically generated to reflect your milestone tasks.
Since milestones are really tasks they provide deeper functionality as compared to phases, namely:
- Milestones can have specific dates (phases inherit their dates from the tasks associated with that phase)
- Milestones can be independently billable on a T&M or fixed price basis. Fixed price milestones can have their own unique fee or charge
- Employees and contractors can booked time to a milestone. Expenses and supplier invoices can be booked to a milestone task. From revenue and cost you can monitor profitability of a milestone
- Milestone percent complete can be monitored and calculated based on overal project progress including by rolling up actuals from sub-tasks within that milestone
Tasks within a milestone are represented as sub-tasks in your project.