A milestone is a task with zero duration that marks a significant point in the project schedule. It represents an event rather than a period of work — a decision, an approval, a deliverable handoff, or the end of a project phase. Because it has no duration, a milestone consumes no calendar time, but it participates in the schedule network like any other task: other tasks can depend on it, and it can depend on other tasks.

What Milestones Are Used For

Milestones serve as reference points in the schedule that stakeholders and the project team can track clearly. Common uses include:

  • Phase boundaries — marking the end of design, the start of construction, or the close of testing
  • Deliverable handoffs — "design document delivered to client"
  • Approvals and sign-offs — "contract signed," "budget approved"
  • External dependencies — "waiting for permit approval" (a milestone that cannot pass until an external event occurs)
  • Go/no-go decision points — checkpoints where the project is reviewed before proceeding
  • Regulatory or contractual deadlines — fixed dates imposed from outside the project

Milestones vs. Summary Tasks

A summary task is a parent task that groups child tasks under it; its duration spans the full range of its children's dates. A milestone has no children and no duration. Both appear on the Gantt chart, but a milestone appears as a diamond shape at a single point in time, not as a bar with length.

A milestone on the critical path has zero float — if any predecessor task slips, the milestone date moves with it, and everything depending on that milestone moves as well.

Milestones in Maverick

In Maverick, any task with a zero-day duration is treated as a milestone. It appears as a diamond on the Gantt chart at its scheduled date. You can link predecessors and successors to milestones using any of the four dependency types. The AI chat can place milestones in the schedule — ask it to "add a design review milestone after the design phase" and it will insert the milestone with the correct predecessor link.

Related Terms

Project Schedule  ·  Gantt Chart  ·  Task Dependency  ·  Project Baseline  ·  Critical Path

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