Milestone plan

Milestone Plan (Gantt Chart)

The purpose of the milestone plan is to have a detailed overview of the event throughout all stages of the event lifecycle (research, planning, execution and shut-down). The milestone plan not only deals with the work tasks in the process of planning the event, but also the specific start date and deadline of each task, as well as its dependencies on other tasks in the project. The milestone plan is built as a timeline, visualizing the time, duration and dependencies of each task in the planning of the event, as well as the important milestones along the way.

Milestones

Milestones are the individual goals to be reached throughout the planning process. They help secure the time schedule is being followed, and each mark a time of celebration of having performed a sequence of critical tasks. Once a milestone has been reached, it opens up for a new line of tasks that have so far been inaccessible to us.

Critical tasks

Those tasks that must be performed in a sequences before other tasks can be done. In the example below, all departments need to perform research and analysis before they can create a strategy, which will then form the basis of their budgets. These are the critical tasks that must be performed before the real planning and execution can start.

Dependencies

Arrows between critical paths and milestones, showing which tasks a dependent on other in order to be done. In the example below, the funding budget cannot be created before the budgets of other departments have been finalized. Also, all departments are dependent on management approving the overall budget, before they can start executing their strategies.

The picture below is a very simplified milestone plan for an event. The timeline is shown at the very top, indicating that the planning starts on April 24th, leading up to the event date on the 21st of June, and the evaluation is finalized on July 5th. Within this period, various tasks take place in the 4 departments of the event organization. Many specific tasks and dependencies are not shown in this example, since it is merely meant to get an understanding of how the milestone plan is built.

Example of milestone plan, created in Instagantt.

Instagantt for creating your milestone plan

Instagantt is an online tool which facilitates the creation af a milestone plan. The primary functions are available for free if you are already registered on Asana. The program lets you import your asana projects directly into the milestone plan, where you can edit and add tasks and milestones. Deadlines and new tasks will be automatically synced with your Asana project.

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