Milestone & Key milestone will not save
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‎05-29-2019 06:55 AM
Hello - we are having a reported issue where our projects team is unable to select key milestone without it changing the dates and duration on the project task. User is opening up an existing project task, checking key milestone (which also checks milestone). Once they save the record, it wipes out the dates and duration and sets it back as zero. I've read that milestones are zero duration but I'm not exactly sure what that means. Can you really only have a zero duration on these records? Any insight is appreciated. Thanks!
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Project Portfolio Management
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‎05-29-2019 08:34 AM
Yes, all of this is intended functionality.
A task can't be a key milestone unless it is first a milestone, so no surprise that checking KEY Milestone will also check Milestone.
A milestone is a point in time, and always a zero duration. It is intended a flag/marker of achievement in the long life of a project.
Very important to note that that zero-duration milestone concept isn't just a ServiceNow concept, but a near universal concept in all Project Management tools. Do NOT attempt to customize away from that paradigm.
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‎05-29-2019 08:36 AM
The project management definition of a Milestone is, "a management tool that is used to represent a point in a project schedule." These points can note the start or finish of a project or a major phase of the work. They let you see how far you have come in a project. This comes in handy when you are doing status reports or updates to progress.
Having said that, yes, Milestones are tasks in the project plan with zero (0) duration. They are only to mark key decision points.
In order for a Milestone to show up in the portfolio workbench and reports, it must be marked as a Key Milestone. If it is marked as a Milestone only , then it is used by the Project Manager as an operational task with no duration. A reevaluation point as it were.
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‎05-29-2019 08:42 AM
Can anyone share an example of what data elements they share from key milestones in their status report then? We were planning on showing the progress of the key milestones in our status report, but if the duration is zero, do you show actual start and planned end?
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‎05-29-2019 08:48 AM
The PROJECT status report would show progress along the entire project.... rarely would someone reading the status report want to hear about individual task status.
Think of hte milestones as "significant moments" in the project. Like maybe we have an analysis phase after which we want to make a decision / re-evaluation. You place a milestone at the end of the development phase.
Another way to illustrate "significant moments". On a 200 task project, does leadership care about 200 tasks? Nope. They probably care about 3 - 5 "milestones" along the way.
"when is development planned to be complete?"
"when is testing planned to start?"
You use milestones to mark places to make a decision or be certain of progress. They are NOT tasks in and of themselves.
