Back to Basics (Part 11): How to Create a Phase-Milestone Plan

Kathrin Jungwirth, Friday 15 February 2019 | Reading time: unknown

A new project is about to start and you want to get a first overview of the schedule and important milestones? Learn more about the phase-milestone plan and how to visualize it with project management software.

Get to Know the Phase-Milestone-Plan

Shortly before the project kick-off, it is often not possible to create a detailed project plan. At this point usually important details are missing. Would you still like to get a rough overview? Then the phase-milestone schedule is your method.

The rough planning method uses milestones to divide the project into phases. You won’t need a lot of details as this simple schedule does not include responsibilities, budgets or specific tasks. The phase- milestone schedule consists of only three components:

Phases: The PMBOK Guide defines phases as a series of logically related activities. Each phase is goal-oriented and ends with a milestone.
Milestones: Milestones are important intermediate goals in the project that divide a project plan into several stages.
Timeline: The timeline is used to chronologically sort the phases and milestones.

How To Create a Phase-Milestone Plan

Step 1: Define Milestones

Firstly, look at the most important decision and orientation points of your project. Which milestones mark the progress of the project and when do they need to be achieved? Let’s assume that you are managing an expo project. In this case the following milestones could be relevant:

Expo concept is defined
Stand area booked & reconfirmed
Orders reconfirmed
Marketing materials completed
End of expo
Final meeting of the team members

Step 2: Define Project Phases

Probably you have automatically set the milestones in a chronological order. The next step is to derive the individual phases from this. Note that milestones can not only mark the end of a project phase, but also highlight some important results within a project phase. The milestone dates defined in the first step already provide you with a rough duration for the respective phase. In our example, we could use the folllowing phases:

Expo concept
Stand area organization
Preparations
Exhibition marketing
Event execution
Wrap-up

Step 3: Visualization

In the last step you start to visualize your results by using a timeline. The best way to do this is to work with project management software. With the InLoox project management solutions for desktop, web and mobile you can quickly and easily create your phase plan as a Gantt chart.

Once the project details have been determined, you can develop a detailed schedule from your rough phase plan and expand your project step by step: break down phases into activities, derive tasks, add resources, etc.