The Project Milestone Plan is a very useful document, and that's a very generic understatement. Having said that, there is a difference between USAGE and UTILITY of a project plan. Amongst others, the most important ways to use a Project Plan lie in 2 aspects of Project Management:
1) Project Planing: Talk about Project Milestone Plan, and many multiple versions of a document jump to mind. There are various pieces of information that a Plan can contain, but its use in the early stages of the project happens well, when atleast the following information is captured on it:
1) Project Planing: Talk about Project Milestone Plan, and many multiple versions of a document jump to mind. There are various pieces of information that a Plan can contain, but its use in the early stages of the project happens well, when atleast the following information is captured on it:
a) Project Milestones and Activities laid out in as much detail as possible.
b) Clear Ownership of the activities
c) Atleast the start and End Dates for each activity.
d) Comments section to lay out dependencies or status
2) Project Tracking: Well crafted and designed dashboards have been the Status Reporting norm in IT companies ever since one can remember. Such dashboards serve the dual purpose of project status reporting, and Risk mitigation. However, such a dashboard based system suffers from the need to be 'linked' to the approved project milestone plan. Essentially, this means that the milestone level dates of the plan are copied to this dashboard, and status is tracked against these copied items. An easier and more accurate way to track the status of the project hands-on, is to 'utilize' the milestone plan itself, and publish it to stakeholders weekly. Since the plan contains activities, dates and owners, it becomes very efficient to report status by way of comparing Actual v/s Planned Dates. Where the project lies today can be directly mentioned at the activity level. The comments section can report potential issues, risks in case of delay.And lastly, since owners are well identified, such reporting lays out the exact resource level dependencies or delays.
The Risks identified here can be tracked in a separate Risk Risk Register and the mitigation can be done on that document.
For most IT Projects, there is good enough reason to 'Utilize' a Project Milestone Plan to track the project accurately and easily. Good PMs realize the value of such plan based reporting to stakeholders.
The Risks identified here can be tracked in a separate Risk Risk Register and the mitigation can be done on that document.
For most IT Projects, there is good enough reason to 'Utilize' a Project Milestone Plan to track the project accurately and easily. Good PMs realize the value of such plan based reporting to stakeholders.
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