Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) is a project management tool that helps track and analyze the progress of a project or a series of events over time. It identifies key milestones in the project’s timeline and then monitors how they are achieved or delayed .
MTA is used to visualize if the work corresponding to certain project milestones is ahead of, on, or behind schedule . It is one of the most used tools in controlling the project schedule . To use MTA, we need a project schedule including its related milestone plan first .
At the beginning of the implementation phase, the team members responsible for the milestones provide their planning status . The MTA chart is then presented on the project management dashboard . The vertical axis is called the “planning line” . If we start the project on time, we can tic off the first milestone, Project Start .
By the end of the first month into the implementation phase, we ask the team members responsible for the milestones M1 to M4 for their best guesses when these milestones could be reached . We obtain this information and present it as an MTA chart on our project management dashboard .
One month later, we ask the expert for System Design if he reached the milestone, and the others for their best guesses again, and so on . We follow that routine and thus obtain a monthly status of the trend of our project milestones . By drawing up the milestones by the end of each reporting period and integrating the resulting MTA chart into our project management dashboard (in our case, monthly), we follow the reporting line and obtain a trend for each one of the milestones .
If the trend for one particular milestone points upward, we shall analyze the situation together with the experts of the work packages which contribute to that milestone, and decide on actions in order to achieve a horizontal trend, or maybe even one that points downwards . Only if we enter that analysis we turn our milestone trend indicator into a real “milestone trend analysis” tool .
In summary, MTA is a useful tool for project managers to track and analyze the progress of a project or a series of events over time . It helps visualize if the work corresponding to certain project milestones is ahead of, on, or behind schedule . By following the routine of obtaining a monthly status of the trend of our project milestones, we can obtain a trend for each one of the milestones . If the trend for one particular milestone points upward, we shall analyze the situation together with the experts of the work packages which contribute to that milestone, and decide on actions in order to achieve a horizontal trend, or maybe even one that points downwards .
