Milestone Tables

00:02 With an amazing project plan like this.

00:04 It's unlikely you'll miss any details.

00:07 You've done all the work and thought of everything.

00:11 But imagine a project stakeholder wants to know the progress of your project. So they take a look at the project plan and are faced with 1000 rows of tasks, all with their own status.

00:23 They will near on have a heart attack.

00:25 No way could they pinpoint any problems or see their impact quickly enough.

00:30 We know senior managers do not have a lot of time.

00:33 For this reason, we have the milestone table where all information is brought to a high level.

00:40 With this, we can see key actions, deliverables and project milestones.

00:45 The main stages of the project are written out as a reference point to check that the project is moving along as planned.

00:52 A reason why having the critical path chart alongside is also a practical idea.

00:56 So how about we show you what a milestone table could look like? Note that we said milestones.

01:10 Milestones, as the name suggests, are important achievements throughout the project. They are marked with a zero duration on the milestone table.

01:18 You can see here.

01:20 Main construction completed.

01:22 Personnel preparation completed.

01:25 Grand opening.

01:27 These are some of the laboratory project milestones.

01:31 Awesome. We have officially covered everything a project manager will need when scheduling their project.

01:39 So to recap.

01:41 A project manager starts by creating a work breakdown structure, separating the project into workstreams deliverables and work packages, and then assigns owners to said packages.

01:53 This translates nicely into an activity list but has little to no sequence.

01:58 So the project manager works out all the dependencies and with that identifies the critical path.

02:05 Awesome. Now the project manager can use the Gantt-Chart to time the execution of tasks around the critical path.

02:13 After all, this is in order.

02:15 The Project Manager will create the low level project plan and the high level milestone table.

02:21 So this leaves the project manager with a project plan that tells them exactly what's going on and the Gantt-Chart and milestone table.

02:28 Ah, so anyone can follow the progress of the project.

02:31 Excellent. This brings us to the end of our timelines.

02:34 Part of this course.

02:35 Now is the time we move on to budgeting.

02:38 We are about to see how a project manager controls costs and gets what they need in the most effective way.

02:44 See you next lesson.