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Project Management vocabulary · Schedule & Time

Milestone

Meaning in project management, with examples

/ˈmaɪlstoʊn/nounCore term

In project management, milestone means: An important point or event in a project schedule, such as the end of a phase or the approval of a key document. It marks progress and takes no time itself.

In Turkish: kilometre taşı, ara hedef

How it is used

Used in plans, Gantt charts and status reports. Teams set, reach, hit or miss milestones. Payments in contracts are often linked to milestones.

Example sentences

  1. We hit our first milestone yesterday: the prototype was approved by the client.

  2. The second payment is due when the testing milestone is completed.

Common collocations

  • hit a milestone
  • miss a milestone
  • key milestone
  • milestone date
  • milestone payment
  • deadlineThe latest date or time by which a task, deliverable or project must be finished.
  • timelineThe planned order and dates of the main activities and milestones of a project, often shown as a line or chart.
  • Gantt chartA bar chart that shows project tasks as horizontal bars on a timeline, so you can see when each task starts and ends and how tasks depend on each other.
  • deliverableA specific product, document or result that a project must produce and hand over, for example a report, a design, a piece of software or a trained team.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Schedule & Time

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