10.33 Measuring Progress with Milestones

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In most projects, there are hundreds of tasks to complete, dozens of milestones, and often more than a few phases. You cannot celebrate the completion of every task, of course, but completion of each milestone is an opportunity to communicate progress to the whole organization. It allows the team to share the success with the whole company and keeps everyone focused on the importance of what you are doing. It is a good idea to print a chart of milestones so that everyone knows where in the chain of events the project is at any given time. I have even posted sanitized versions of this progress indicator in the elevators around work areas to keep everyone advised of where we are in the course of project completion. It works. When people are informed and know you are tracking the status that closely, they are satisfied that the project is in good hands. That mitigates pain.

10.33.1 Defect Detection and Prevention

At the conclusion of each task, someone should check the work to ensure that it was done to standard, meets the quality levels expected, and can stand up to the scrutiny of objective evaluation. Who does that? Why did they not think to go over that stuff at the beginning of the task—at task start? How did the person performing that task know that you were going to come along and check that stuff? If you put it into the plan as a gating factor to task start and completion for every task, that’s how they will know. It is a bit more work, but when people are accustomed to having someone else check their work, it is amazing how well they can do that work. It builds a mentality of quality into the organization, and that mitigates pain.

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