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Software Engineering vocabulary · Testing

Milestone

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈmaɪlstoʊn/nounCommon term

In software engineering, milestone means: An agreed point in development when specific work must be delivered and reviewed, such as a playable demo, alpha or beta; publishers often pay the studio per milestone.

In Turkish: kilometre taşı, ara teslim, milestone

How it is used

Producers plan milestones and their deliverables. Teams hit, miss, deliver or slip milestones. In publishing contracts, milestone payments keep independent studios running, so a missed milestone can be serious.

Example sentences

  1. The next milestone is a 15-minute playable demo for the publisher.

  2. If we miss this milestone, the payment is delayed by a month.

Common collocations

  • hit a milestone
  • milestone payment
  • milestone build
  • miss a milestone
  • milestone review
  • vertical sliceA short but fully finished part of a game, such as one level, that shows final quality in art, sound and gameplay to prove what the whole game will be like.
  • alphaThe stage of development when all main features are in the game and it can be played from start to finish, but it still has many bugs, placeholders and no polish.
  • betaThe stage after alpha when the game's content is complete and the team focuses on fixing bugs and polishing; also a public or closed test of that version.
  • buildThe process of turning source code into a program or package that can run, or the result of that process. Also a verb: to build the project.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Testing

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