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Setting milestones
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in practice
Timelines are a necessary part of plans and milestones
add transparency to a project. They represent the results of work plan
action and are an excellent means of communicating expectations and
helping to drive efficiency. As well as capturing milestones - milestone
planning, includes:
- Presentation and team meeting dates - schedule around key
stakeholders
- Parliamentary recess dates and team and stakeholder leave dates.
Timelines help the team leader identify and manage the
'critical path'. Some tips on how to do this are to:
1. Identify the longest lead items - the 'critical path'
- Start working on key data and inputs as soon as possible
- 'Front load' effort on critical items
- Make data requests explicit and clear - verifying understanding
- Set and agree clear deadlines for external sources of information
and escalate if the source is unresponsive
2. Work backwards from the key milestones
- Remember your output may be on someone else's critical path
- Think about what the next steps will be following this project
3. Attempt to fill 'white space' with productive
activities
- Produce the 'quick wins' as quickly as possible
The level of detail required in a plan will depend on
the type of plan used (e.g. issue-based or calendar-based) and on the
project - it's complexity, length and intensity, the experience levels
within the team and the level of clarity on the issue to be addressed.
An example of a milestone plan can be seen in the
diagram below:
In addition to the overall project milestone plan, It is helpful to
develop workstream-specific milestone plans. This will ensure that all
team members are clear as to expectations and deadlines.
Setting milestones
In Practice: SU Alcohol Project
On the Alcohol project we found it very important to
make sure that everyone on the team was clear about key milestones and
understood how their work fed into meeting the objectives and deadlines.
We used our weekly team meeting to review the project plan and the key
tasks for the coming week. This enabled us to discuss issues and
circumstances that might impact on the milestones and think about how we
might manage them.
In the early phase of the alcohol project we had some
part-time team members. To ensure that they could contribute effectively
and were kept up to date with progress towards our milestones we used a
"buddying" system where a full-time team member kept in touch
and updated a part-time one.
The project's milestones didn't just affect the
team. It was important to involve and work with external people who could
help us achieve our goals. For example, we developed a good working
relationship with our Sponsor Minister's Private Office, which helped us
get papers cleared by the Minister at short notice and get papers to them
when the Minister was actually in the office.
We always celebrated achieving our milestones. For
example, when we published our interim analysis, completed the draft
report and at other important times we celebrated with a cake, a
celebratory drink, a meal or simply leaving the office early for a well
earned rest.
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