Manage Milestones

Milestones are sub-projects that are part of a project. A technician can create n number of milestones in a projects.

Some of the benefits of having milestones are as follows:

  • Better manage deadlines.
  • Helps in evaluating the critical path of the project.
  • Make important dates visible.
  • Isolate potential bottlenecks in the project.

Create a Milestone

  • A technician opens a project and clicks the Milestones tab.
figure 16

  • He then clicks on the Create Milestone button which opens a dialog box where he can enter the following inputs:

    figure 17
    1. Name of the milestone.
    2. Assign a technician as the owner of the milestone.
    3. Set start and end dates for the milestone. The time period has to fall within the project timeline.
    4. Write a description of the milestone.
    5. Uploads any file.

  • When done, he clicks on Create.

Grouping Tasks into a Milestone

Tasks created in a project can be added to milestones. It’s a logical way of grouping tasks.

Some of the benefits of grouping tasks by milestone are:

  • Generally, a project is a series of smaller projects also known as milestones in our ITSM. Grouping tasks by milestones, gives visibility to the project owner and context to the task owners.
  • Helps an owner to focus by creating tasks to accomplish his milestone.
  • Helps in creating better timeline for a task.

To Group a Task:

  • Go to the details view of a task.

  • Click on the Milestone tab. Here a technician can drag a task into a milestone, and the task is grouped.

    figure 21

Note

Related Topics: Create a Task and Create a Milestone.

Start a Milestone

A milestone is like a mini-project within a project. It has a start and end date. When a milestone is created, it doesn’t start by default. A technician has to start a milestone.

Note

The start and end date of a milestone has to lie within the time period of the main project.

To start a milestone:

  • Go to the details view of a task.
  • Click on the Milestone tab.
  • Select a milestone and click on Start from it action menu. The milestone will start on confirmation.
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Marking a Milestone as Complete

A milestone is a time bound activity. A technician can mark a milestone as completed/closed from:

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The default custom rule will ask the following before marking a milestone as complete.

  • A milestone owner.
  • All associated tasks marked as done.

One can change the default custom rule. Learn more.

View Audit Trail of a Milestone

The audit trail of a milestone shows all the changes made to it and by whom along with date and time stamp.

To open audit trail:

  • Go to the details view of a task.
  • Click on the Milestone tab.
  • Select a milestone and click on View Audit Trail from it action menu.
figure 23

Delete/Cancel a Milestone

A technician can delete/cancel a milestone from a project.

To delete/cancel a project:

  • Go to the details view of a task.
  • Click on the Milestone tab.
  • Select a milestone and click on Archive/Cancel from it action menu.
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  • On confirmation, the milestone is deleted/cancelled.