Goals and Milestones

Objectives

• Define the goals of the project
• determine a timeline for project
• Set major milestones for project and projected dates for achieving those milestones
• Create a simple gantt chart for the project

Description

Goals

Part of the project is to set individual goals for what you wish to learn and accomplish. These goals can be technical and/or personal. For a Web Programmer, for instance, some goals might be:

• To expand my understanding of PHP
• To develop a secure database application
• To adapt my ideas to the requirements and desires of a client
• To build a project that I can use as a portfolio piece

Milestones

Milestones are places in the project process where you can stop and say. "OK, I know where I am. I have accomplished these things and I have x number of things left to do."

Sample milestones:

• Finish modeling project requirements
• Finish the navigation map of the web site
• Create the class diagrams
• Create the database
• Finish coding the shopping cart
• Finish the main web form

A milestone should clearly mark the point where you have finished one stage of the project and are ready to move on to the next

To Do

First, think about what you want to do and develop 3 to 5 goals.

Next , to develop your milestones, extablish a preliminary time line for your project. Start at the end when the project is due and work backwards. Identify the major components and try to estimate how long it will take to finish each of them. Then determine when they need to be completed if you are going to finish on time. These are your milestones.

Create a timeline with these milestones and the approximate dates you hope to have them completed. (Late we can use this timeline to compare where your are versus where you hoped to be in relation to them.

To turn in

Turn in the list of goals and a timeline with the milestones marked and dated

Evaluation

For the goals I will look for

Clarity

That is I want them clearly stated

Depth and Challenge

I want the goals to show that you are challenging yourself with this project (but not that you are reaching beyond what is possible in one quarter's work)

For the Milestones I will look for

Completeness

That is, I will look to see if you have listed all the points that I consider major milestones in your project

Reasonableness

By that I mean that you have given reasonable estimates for the time it will take to accomplish a certain task.

Doableness

This is related to the one above: I want to make sure the project is doable in the time alloted