You lead a milestone when a manager of your department names you its leader. The project manager has decided what the milestone must deliver and by when, and given it to your department. You decide how: you cut the work into tasks, give them to people, put them in order, check the results and keep the project manager informed.
Leading is work in its own right. While you lead a milestone, your own task load should come down; if it cannot, tell your manager.
What being the leader lets you do
- Give the milestone's tasks to people in the milestone's department, and to anyone already named on the project, and move a task between them. You need no extra permission for this, but only on the milestone you lead, and only while it is open.
- Review their work. You are the manager of the tasks you create, so the results come to you to rate or send back.
- Everything else a contributor to the project can do on the milestone page: New task, Set order, the documents folder, the chat.
Give each task to a person. A task for a whole team needs the Create tasks permission; with it you can send it to any department, and its manager assigns it (see Send a task to a department).
Need somebody who is neither in the department nor on the project? Ask the project manager to add them on the project's Access tab first.
Your first hour
- Open the milestone from the project, or from the line in its chat. Read what it must deliver and its target date. If either is unclear, ask the project manager in the milestone's chat before you plan anything.
- Cut the work into tasks. One person each, start to end, without waiting for anyone. See What a task is, and what to do when you are stuck. Six clear tasks are better than one task called "Mechanical design".
- Create them with New task on the milestone page: what needs doing, the details, who it is for, a due date and a priority. Leave Must be done before this milestone can close ticked for every task the milestone really needs.
- Put them in order if some must wait for others: Set order gives each task a step, and a step goes out to its people only when the step before it is handed over. Tasks with the same step run side by side.
- Check the dates. The tasks' due dates must leave room before the milestone's target date, including time for your reviews.
If the milestone has not started yet, the tasks you create wait. Their people do not see them and are not told until the milestone starts. Finish writing them before then: every waiting task goes out at that moment, finished or not.
While the work runs
- Review quickly. A task that waits for your review holds up the next step. If you do not rate it within 48 hours, it is approved automatically.
- Watch the milestone page. Each task card shows where it is and, while it waits, what for.
- Fix the plan when it changes. Add a task, change the order, give a task to someone else. A task already started is never taken back by a new order.
- Report in the milestone's chat. A short line when a step is done, and early warning when the target date is at risk. Do not wait for the project manager to ask.
The milestone closes by itself when every task marked Must be done is done.
If you cannot lead it
Tell the manager who named you. They can name somebody else (Leader → Change on the milestone page). Until a leader is named, the milestone shows unled, and nobody is planning it.
Common mistakes
- One big task for the whole milestone. Nobody can see progress, and nothing can run side by side.
- A milestone per step. Keep one milestone and use Set order; see Milestones or tasks? Planning a project.
- Tasks for work that has its own record. A part to order is an MPO-, a build is a WO-. Link or mention the record; do not copy it into a task.
- Doing the work yourself instead of planning it. You can take a task yourself, but the milestone needs its plan first.
Related: Giving a milestone to a department · Waiting tasks: one after another, and sent when people arrive · Reviewing work: rate, request changes & the 48-hour window