Planning
Milestones that help you decide
A schedule full of decorative milestones helps nobody. A good milestone marks a moment when you check something and decide what comes next.
- Line shutdown · Oct 14Is production stopped? → dismantling started
- Site ready · Nov 18 +3 dNetworks and anchors inspected? → reassembly started
- Production restart · Dec 1Are the trials conclusive? → production resumed
+3 d, absorbed by the buffer before the restart
Some schedules have dozens of milestones: one per meeting, one per deliverable, one per step completed. Eventually, they no longer signal anything.
One milestone, one question
A useful milestone asks a yes-or-no question whose answer changes what comes next. In our relocation, three milestones are enough:
- line shutdown, on October 14: is production really stopped, can dismantling start?
- site ready, on November 18: have the networks and anchors been inspected, can reassembly start?
- production restart, on December 1: are the trials conclusive, can production resume?
Protect the milestones that matter
Important milestones deserve a buffer just before them. In our example, site preparation fell 3 days behind: the "site ready" milestone slipped to November 18, but the restart holds, thanks to the buffer before it.
Key points
- a milestone asks a closed question and triggers a decision;
- few milestones, but all tracked;
- a buffer before every milestone that commits what follows.
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