Milestones

We think the best way to help keep yourself on track in LiquidPlanner is by adding deadline dates to key plan items.  If the finish dates for those items are slipping toward the deadline date, you'll be alerted.   

There may be times, however, when you want to represent a fixed-date item in your plan that won't budge, no matter how things are progressing (or not) around it.  That's where Milestones come into play.  Milestones are created via the add menu in the Projects view, or via the right-click menu.

A Milestone might serve simply as a visual marker that doesn't affect your schedule at all.  Or, it could actually play a role in driving your schedule dates.  For instance, a Milestone can represent a fixed date that is driving the start of other work:

In this example, Phase 2 won't start before the Focus Group milestone date.  Of course, you could always just put a delay date on the Phase 2 work, without creating a Milestone; but the Milestone makes it clear why that work is starting on that day.  It's also nice that if you change the fixed Milestone date, the start date of the other work will adjust automatically as well.

When considering the use of Milestones, remember that you can't add an estimate to a milestone.  That means you shouldn't use a Milestone for work that needs to be represented in the project's remaining effort figure, or for work that should pull availability from the Milestone owner.