Jack Wallen explains what milestones are in project management and how you can add them in Ora.
When most people think of milestones, they think of those passing moments or events that mark important points in their lives – graduating from high school, the first day of college, getting married. When it comes to project management, milestones serve a similar purpose as they refer to specific points within the project lifecycle that are used to measure progress towards the goal.
Project management milestones include points such as start and end dates, beta testing, external reviews, budget checks, submissions to be delivered, key meetings, and release dates. Another important aspect of project management milestones is that they serve as reference points for important events or branching decisions.
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Milestones are a critical aspect of project management and also one that you should have a clear understanding of, as well as a collection of the milestones that are important to your project and business.
The big question now is, do you use milestones? If not, you should start recording them as soon as possible. In most project management platforms, milestones are a pretty easy feature to get started with. That fact I want to demonstrate with Ora task manager app. If you’re just now trying Ora, you might consider doing something like this importing your tasks from Trello to make testing easier.
What you need to add milestones in an Ora managed project
To work with milestones, you only need a valid Ora account. You can use the free or paid version and the web or desktop app. I’ll demonstrate it on the desktop application, but the process is the same either way.
How to add your first milestone in the desktop app
Before I show you, know that milestones should be well thought out and created even before the launch of the project. You can add milestones at any time, but they work best if they are created during the planning phase of the project.
Whether you add milestones at the beginning or during the project lifecycle, this is what you do.
First log in to your Ora account and then open the relevant project. With that project open, you should see a toolbar on the right side of the main window (Image A).
Image A
The milestone icon is the fourth from the top and looks like a signpost.
Figure B
Click New Milestone and, when prompted (Figure C), give the milestone a name.
After naming the milestone, you can also select an associated scheduled date by clicking Scheduled Dates and selecting the desired date from the pop-up (Figure D).
Figure C
Click Create and your milestone is ready.
One quirk I’ve noticed with the Ora desktop app is that you can create milestones, but they don’t show up. If you’re creating milestones on the desktop, check the web version and you’ll see they’re clearly there. Therefore, I would recommend that you do this on the web version, which is done in the same way as on the desktop version.
How to associate a milestone with a task
Let’s say you have a particular task that is directly related to a milestone. To associate a milestone with a task, open the card for the task and see the Set Milestone drop-down list. Click on that and select one of the milestones you just created.
Now that you’ve got this sorted out, you can do things like filter tasks by milestone and close a milestone when all associated tasks are completed.
Take the time to implement milestones in your project management and you will find that the workflow will be much easier to follow and more efficient and effective. After all, the goal is to work smarter, not harder.
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