A milestone in project management is a specific point within a project's life cycle used to measure progress toward the ultimate goal. It can signify major accomplishments, pivotal events, or the completion of key deliverables within a project’s timeline. Milestones are important for tracking performance, coordinating efforts, and helping everybody understand the project's progress. They are used to mark the completion of a major phase of work, note the start and finish of a project, or highlight the production of project deliverables. Project milestones are checkpoints that mark important events, dates, decisions, and deliverables, and they are used to ensure that everything stays on track throughout the course of the project
. Milestones are often represented in project management tools such as Gantt charts and are used to calculate the slack in a project by segmenting the project timeline into intervals or smaller time frames to control and track progress. They are also used to more accurately estimate the time it will take to complete a project
. In summary, milestones are vital scheduling and planning tools in project management, helping to track progress, coordinate efforts, and ensure that the project stays on course.