Can I Define Milestones For My Project ?

Squore allows tracking your progress by setting milestones, which consist of a series of goals for specific metrics at certain dates in the life of your project. In this chapter, you will learn how to set up these goals and how to read dashboard charts that show deviations from these goals or changes in your project milestones.

Setting up goals

Not all models support milestones, but if yours does, you will see a Milestones pane on the first page of the project wizard. The Milestones pane is where you can see the existing milestones for a project, with their associated goals and dates.

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Figure 1. The Milestones pane in the project wizard

In the example above, our model defines 5 milestones (SPRINT1 to SPRINT5) for the lifecycle of our project.

Each milestone has a set date and defines goals for the following key performance indicators in our project:

  • Blocker Issues

  • Technical Debt

  • Self Descriptiveness

  • Major Issues

  • Critical Issues

  • Coding Standard Compliance

The Milestones pane allows you to change the dates and goals for your project. If a milestone is optional and is not relevant for your project, you can remove it by clicking the x next to its name. This is possible for all the milestones in our example above. By clicking the + icon to the right of the last milestone, you can create a new milestone for the project and define your own goals. You can also add a new goal for your project by selecting a metric from the list at the bottom of the table and clicking the \+ icon.

When you are satisfied with the milestones set for your project, click the Next button to continue with the creation of the project.

Goals and dates can be modified every time you create a new version of the project if you decide that your schedule slips. Goals and dates are versioned, so your dashboard can always show you when in the timeline of your project you decided to change your milestones.

In order to avoid possible conflicts between the User Interface and the Data Provider, please note that you can focus the milestones creation with the Data Provider by clicking the checkbox "Only use milestones and goals provided by Data Provider. Checking this box hides the milestones creation section of the wizard user interface.

Milestones on your dashboard

When you consult the dashboard of a project that uses milestones, the functionality allows you to:

  • Display the goals defined for each milestone in your project

  • Display the changes made to the goals defined for each milestone

  • Display the date changes for your milestones

  • Show markers for milestone dates and goals

The following is an example of a chart that mixes objectives, projected performance and milestone date changes:

ALL UsingMilestones 04 dateChange
Figure 2. A chart tracking your technical debt progress, projected performance, goals and milestone date slips

Some action items on your model can also take advantage of this feature to warn you about poor performance:

ALL UsingMilestones 03 actionitemCritical
Figure 3. Action items based on milestone dates and goals

For more information on how you can improve your model with milestones and the above chart and action items, refer to Milestones Tutorial and the Configuration Guide.

Milestones in Project Portfolios

You can also visualize the milestones setup for each version of your project in the Project Portfolios :

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Figure 4. Visualizing project’s versions milestones via sandwich menu in Project Portfolios

A pop-up shows you the milestones definition at version creation :

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Figure 5. Project’s version milestones pop-up