milestone

[bewildered]

How do you create a task list in which each task is a milestone?

 

[Mark S Thompson]

Hi Bewildered,

In MSP 2002:

1 On the View menu, click Gantt Chart.

2 Type 0 in the Duration field of the task you want to change.

3 Press ENTER.

Tip Some milestones may need a duration. For example, your project has an
approval milestone at the end of a phase and you know that the approval
process will take a week. To mark a task as a milestone with a duration of
more than 0 days, click Task Information , and then click the Advanced tab.
In the Duration box, enter the task duration, and then select the Mark task
as milestone check box.

Regards

Mark

 

[bewildered]

How do you create a task list in which each task is a milestone?

Thanks Mark that does help. i have never done a Project just listing
Milestones.
To me a critical task list would have been preferable.

 

[davegb]

Thanks Mark that does help. i have never done a Project just listing
Milestones.
To me a critical task list would have been preferable.

It can be argued that a milestone with a duration greater than zero is
not a milestone, milestone being defined (by PMI) as a task with zero
duration. Milestones are intended to be marker points in the schedule
which tell you that some major event has occured, like "Design
Complete" or "Materials Purchased". Note that tasks are always verb-
noun, like "Design Pump Installation" or "Write Specs". Milestones are
just the opposite, noun verb, implying completion.

In over thirty years of scheduling, I've yet to see a useful purpose
for a milestone with a duration greater than zero. MS Project
developers saw fit to put in this feature, but if you have any
knowledge of the genesis of Project for Windows, you know that no one
on the team had any idea at all of how scheduling, much less Project
Management, is done. Their successors have come a long way since then,
but they've still kept a number of dubious capabilities/features in
the product.

Hope this helps in your world.

 

[Steve House]

Continuing with other's points, it could be argued that a "plan" consisting
of nothing but milestones is not a plan at all. It's a to-do list that
tells you what your objectives are and when you might want to achieve them
but it doesn't tell you a thing about what exactly you have to do when in
order to make it all happen. It does not give you the information you need
to be able to go up to a worker on the project and say "Joe, I need you to
go to XXX on YYY date with the neccessary tools to do ZZZ. It should take
you about HHH hours to wrap it up, are you good with my telling Bill that's
about when he can start on his part?"