Website Development Project Milestone Examples
Prior to developing the project schedule, project activities must be defined. These activities must them be sequenced, a process which defines task dependencies and priorities. A fundamental part of this sequencing process involves defining the project milestones.
Project milestones are major project deliverables and can be used as key progress indicators when measuring overall project performance. For example, a milestone is either complete or not complete. Because of this, information on milestone progress can be presented to project stakeholders in a clear and concise manner. Milestones can also be used to manage contract payments.
Milestones can be defined any number of ways. Some project managers will associate milestones with a particular task or deliverable. However, milestones can also be reflective of the project schedule (e.g. “week 10 of the project”) or project budget (e.g. “25% of budget spent”). Regardless, milestones are always significant accomplishments within the project framework.
A milestone list is simply a listing of all project milestones that are of particular interest to a project stakeholder or project team. A project may then have multiple milestone lists.
Milestone tracking is generally done within the project schedule, using a specific symbol to report whether the milestone has been met or remains not complete.
The following milestone list is based on the example Website development project WBS
- Domain Name selected and registered
- RFP completed
- Vendor selected
- Site content completed
- Beta site released for testing
- Production website deployed
The above milestones are all task and deliverable based. Each of these milestones should be evaluated within the overall cost, schedule and scope constraints of the project. For example, project reporting might include information on the actual versus planned costs of work completed up to the project milestone. This will help both the project manager and stakeholders understand whether and how much the project is ahead of, under or on budget and whether or how much the project is ahead of, behind or on schedule.