“I saw the sign
And it opened up my eyes, I saw the sign.
Life is demanding without understanding.”
This song from the 90’s by Ace of Base comes to mind. Milestones are a great time to meet with the stakeholders, gain understanding from one another, and consider the signs: to know if your project is going as desired at this point, if something has changed, and what is next up ahead.
Here is my takeaway #26 from one of the most useful practical books in my field, “Project Management for the Unofficial Project Manager”:
26) “Another way to keep the project on track is to put milestones into your schedule. Like a traffic sign, a milestone is a signal that you’ve reached an important decision point in the project. Traveling down a road, you will see signs that tell you to stop, turn, exit, or go back. When you reach a milestone, you have to make that kind of decision–to keep the project going, stop it, back up, or change direction.”
Note: This comes from Chapter 4 “Planning the Project: Milestone or Mirage?” (pages 107)
Many projects push through no matter what, but it’s wise to consider the signs along the way and alternative options when signs pop up that warn of danger ahead. Small projects, where you can see the beginning from the end, and everything in between, don’t have a lot of milestones to begin with and can usually keep on keeping on. Bigger projects, where more people are impacted–or relatively small projects are a bigger undertaking because more is assigned per person committed to carrying out a project–have milestones that are not as easily understood until you reach certain points. In other words, it’s a matter of, “We will cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Honestly, my personal opinion is that this applies more to “phase gates” in Traditional “Waterfall” Project Management, but there is such a thing as Adaptive Project Management, which is the more iterative version of long-established project management and allows the Project Manager some leeway. And of course, there is the Agile approach, which works well for certain more pliable projects. Agile concepts have a structure and governance that is understood and built-in and automatically allows the Project Manager and Project Team to make a lot of change decisions for projects. Still, any project approaches need to be set up by and understood organizationally to be properly supported.
It makes sense for “unofficial” project managers, with self-forming teams, to run with the authority they have, however that is attained, if it is ultimately backed by the organization. Acting project managers, in between their functional responsibilities, can certainly take a more Agile approach with a quick strike game plan where they may swiftly adjust “on the fly” for projects of that nature. But for projects that are more traditional by nature, where other sponsoring authorities retain some oversight of project governance, the organization should structure in Change Board requirements, and they should make such strategic decisions at milestones and phase gates. You shouldn’t have to worry about changing the prescription of the project itself, just following orders.
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STORY TIME:
Imagine what happens if the team and the stakeholders are working on their assignments without any checkpoints. What if the person responsible for the release of a finished outcome is held accountable for missed signs and mishandling of handoffs that did not involve them throughout the process ahead of them. In other words, the team was treating the workflow more operationally, not following any real form of project management, and then the last person in the chain of events gets whatever they get and has to rectify it. It’s very frustrating! (“Don’t throw a fit!”, as they say.) I have experienced this ad nauseum. Avoid this at all costs. But you might not have much say in it. You will need your organization to buy-in; it must set up a pure form of project management to overcome this problem!
If you are working on a project with no clear authority (Or clear and reasonable responsibilities for what you can control), no clear form and function, or clear milestones, these are signs that your team rushed into a project with no real plan and without at least a minimal requirement of a well-defined Scope Criteria. I have worked on many projects that later pretended that we were just being Agile all along. The so-called project manager gets blamed if something unexpected results. That’s not how it is supposed to work!
Sometimes we had a good idea to work on something and just anxiously jumped right in without setting up some caution signs, but we had no real concept of what this choice would lead to and look like in the end (what was in someone else’s head) and how we would get there (wherever “there” was). We were making it up as we went, rather than figuring out together what we wanted from the project, all that might stand in our way, and if we were “on the same page” from beginning, through the murky middle, to the end. Lead the project; don’t let it lead you. Milestones have helped us correct course time and time again.
Note: This story gives two main actions that good projects take, one is done organizationally and the other can be done by a project manager with organizational approval. Project Managers don’t change Milestones and move signs without formal sponsor and stakeholder backing.
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Milestones help line up the work with the destination. These are checkpoints to see if you are on track or if you have gotten off by degree. If you wait until a phase gate, you will be so far off the original line that the project can’t be salvaged. That will create a lot of frustrations. But Milestones themselves aren’t usually cause for the end of a project, they are usually fixed signs of progress toward your end goal. They are cause to celebrate. You may have to take some detours around construction zones making the journey an adventure, but your organization can reduce some of the Environmental Factors external to the project, so it isn’t so difficult to reach each Milestone.
Where I have had the best opportunities to get back on track have usually come at these pre-determined milestones. These stopping points have indicated whether what is materializing through all the challenges is still what is expected or not in the minds of decision-makers who commissioned or at least signed off on the initiation of a project. Oftentimes, I have found what gets communicated to the team often gets refined as stakeholders start seeing how it really translates into action. See the signs for what they are, organizationally, as a team, and individually. Discuss your options, make recommendations, and make decisions according to your appropriate designated stewardship.
As you checkoff these small “wins”, excitement builds. When everyone works together as one you can accomplish more than you can do alone. Who knows, you might even have a clean, perfect release, for the first time ever!