Milestones

Summary

Milestone activities are used to denote key events on a schedule, such as approval to proceed, phase completion, key document completed, and more. Many project managers use milestones to target and mark the completion of major deliverables. 

Milestones are unique in that they are strictly informational; they have no duration and do not reflect work performance, so they have neither effort nor assigned resources. They are sometimes referred to as ‘flags’. A milestone is denoted on Gantt charts as a diamond shape. Milestones are often used as a summary reporting metric. Some organizations even attribute a "weight" to the milestone, to aid in providing a subjective view of project completion (independent of the remaining work determined as part of time reporting).