I'm not sure exactly what your question is asking. But in my personal opinion I do not think missing a milestone is a link to future success for a company in the long run. For example, when you miss a milestone, you most likely are compromising on understanding your product better and you are taking a risk when you rush through the timeline. When you have to fit multiple tasks in a tight timeline this is where most of the little details can be overlooked and you end up with future problems. For instance, your product being taken off the market in the future because a detail you overlooked has to come the attention of FDA or consumers etc.

However, I will also say it depends on what milestone you missed. How critical was it to your overall project. If its something that can be fixed or overlooked, than I do not think it is a bad thing.

From how I am understanding the question, I believe that it is never good to miss a major milestone of a project. Having said this, the missed milestone is definitely a wakeup call to everyone in the project team that their planning and execution ideals are not in sync. This missed milestone must be assessed and addressed internally and a new/delayed plan of action must created (this is assuming no slack time was built in or already used up).

Also, as previously mentioned above, missing a milestone is nowhere near as bad as finishing the project on time and resulting in a faulty product. Missing a critical milestone may make investors and upper management unhappy while costing the project manager more money. This situation is still favorable to hitting all milestones on time and releasing a product that has flaws leading to its eventual recall. This is by far the worst case scenario for a company because not only does it cost exorbitant amounts of money, but it also damages the entire company’s reputation.

In the short term, missing a milestone may not be ideal for the project team, but it is by far preferable to rushing a project and having something go wrong post release.

Hello, I understand the point you are trying to bring up.

There is no doubt that the real business does not happen when a customer decides to choose your company to do a project, the real business happens when that same customer comes back satisfied to your company in a satisfied way and asks you to do a second project because the first one was excellent. Missing a milestone causes the project manager to miss all the due dates previously established. I don’t think there will be a customer who gets satisfied when they find out that their project has been delayed. That is why you have to be as detailed as possible in the planning phase, so that when the executing phase arrives, there are less chances of making a mistake which will make the customer happy, which will make that customer come back and make more profit for the company.

Additionally, I agree with someone up there who mentioned that the consequences of missing a milestone totally depends on how important the milestone was. But I do not think that missing a milestone could bring some type of future success for the company.

Let me know what you think!
Sincerely,
Roberto Pineda.

Missing milestones creates setbacks a lot of the time which can be harmful to a company rather than beneficial. I understand when you say that it might be beneficial to a company because your working on perfecting the device before it gets marketed. However, missed milestone in a company can lead to loss of money. My dad is a supervisor in New York City and he was the project manager of a year long project which had a deadline set for October 15th. If he was not able to get his team to complete the project by that deadline then the company he works for will have to pay another corporation $100,000 each day the project was delayed.Their was no room in that kind of schedule to miss milestones because the consequences were very harsh. When I worked on a year long project whenever we missed milestones it wasn't a good news for my team. It meant that we had less time to complete other milestones.

Missing a milestone is not bad at once; however, missing more than 2 milestones lead to significant reductions in customer satisfaction and confidence which is bad for company’s reputation. It could be avoid by examining key possibilities in detail that can get to the root cause of the problem and get the project team back on track toward on time delivery of critical project tasks. I agree with some of the above posts quality matters. We don’t want to finish the project that cause any problems later on. Also, you should know from your clients’ perspectives sometime they value time as compared to cost and quality.

We can't underestimate the setbacks and repercussions missing milestones can cause when it comes to a project. As others have already stated, it costs management time and money. Money may be negligible depending on the dollar amount, but time is something you do not get back. It looks bad on the company's end to the customers that their are delays and customers may not take you seriously if it becomes a habit. Missing a milestone may also cause a domino effect for the timeline of the project and can cause delays in the rest of the other milestones and critical tasks to be carried out. Missing a milestone may be good if you're doing more research regarding the project/product, but what about the rest of the project? Taking your time on one milestone means you're going to have to rush on another milestone. Sure, you may have a better quality on that missed milestone, but reaching that same amount of quality for the next one is going to be challenging with an even smaller time constraint. It's best to have all milestones balanced out when it comes to time and quality so in the end it results in a well rounded project/product. Project managers should account for these types of occurrences when making up the gantt chart and should keep in mind some milestones may take longer to reach depending on how much information they have or how difficult the tasks may be in order to reach that milestone.

Regardless, the only time I'd think missing a milestone would be a good thing is if you ended up using a budget well under the projected costs and are still somehow able to put the initial amount of quality into the next milestone.

In any project, the milestones are the important landmarks to assess the project.The project manager uses milestones to gauge if the project is on the right track, whether it is ending the project phase or completing the deliverables. In order to avoid missing milestones, the project manager should use short and descriptive names such that the criteria i.e to be met are answerable by a simple Yes or No. This helps in avoiding vague and hazy milestones which makes it difficult to tell when the one phase of the project ends and another begins.

There are two types of milestones used by the PM ; major and the minor. Major milestones are the major events or external facing deliverables that include product prototypes, end of development phase, or a feature that needs to be reviewed by the clients or the stakeholders. Any delay in the major milestones is a big setback for the project and the company. On the other hand, the minor milestones which are smaller, day to day events are basically used to gauge the internal purposes than externals are not usually seen by the clients or the stakeholders, so a small delay in these doesn't affect the project that much.

A project manager usually assess the project based on three fixed steps:
1. Distance travelled
2. Distance to be travelled
3. Direction of travel
Based on these the Project Manager makes accurate predictions and sets a path to follow to get these.

While sometimes, working on the project uncovers data that changes the entire direction of the project and leads to change in the predefined milestones. So at this point, the PM stops and evaluates where the project is heading and whether it is viable to miss the earlier milestones and pursue the newer ones which make the product more popular amongst the clients and stakeholders. Thus, the milestones are very critical but hardly perfect.

Missing milestones is not so bad if you either have the foresight to anticipate issues or if you have well-developed contingency plans. Missing milestones become an issue when something unexpected happens that you weren't prepared for. For example, say you're building a device that is supposed to interface with an ECG, and you procure parts for the device. Something like faulty components from third-parties could really cause you to miss milestones. But faulty components isn't something you expected since you placed trust in the chip manufacturer to deliver quality products. Missing milestones don't always hurt projects, but missing a significant amount will drive the budget of the project up and cause significant delays for deadlines. This could be detrimental for patent applications, subsequent milestone deadlines, and can hurt commercial viability if the device comes out at an in-oppurtune time, i.e., a competitor has already made it to market before you. Being able to adapt to missed milestones can lead to overall success in the long run because it provides experience for the entire project team and enables them to develop foresight on potential issues in subsequent projects. There are pros and cons regarding the effects of missing milestones, but as a whole, the project team should do its best to avoid missing milestones.

I believe that missing a milestone is really a bad thing in industry. While working at General Dynamics Electric Boat, milestones are set and those are part of a contract. When you don't meet those milestones, it could cost the companies millions (each day you are behind) and it makes it look like our competitors can do a better job (Newport News). This costs the company money and can lead to losing future contracts and people losing their jobs. It also has led to the current employees losing benefits (or so they say). Missing milestones really has a negative effect on all the employees at the company and it doesn't matter if they were directly involved or not. It's the same company and we are all in the same boat. When meeting a milestone you are not just doing it for your project, you are doing it for the current and future employees of that company as well.

Missing a milestone is usually more than a minor hurdle within industry. For a project missing milestones as indicated in your post would waste company financial resources. However, this is not the extent of the damage, along with financial resources being strained missed milestones can delay a project and take away employee resources as well. For example, if a certain project missed a milestone and therefore needed a team of engineers to stay on longer to complete the project, this would drain from the other tasks/projects those employees could have been working on. Therefore, it can lead to a chain reaction in other delays within the company and sometimes this leads to companies pulling the plug on projects altogether and taking the losses.

I agree with a lot of the posts in this thread. I also believe that missing a milestone is a bad thing. While I do understand the point that you are trying to bring up in that a delay is not necessarily a bad thing because it sort of serves as a quality checkpoint. However, because you missed this milestone, you're delaying the rest of the process. And oftentimes, this can cause the business to lose money. To give you an example, let's say there was a lot on hold because of some issue with a machine. Now, you have to go an do an investigation as to why that machine failed (quality checks). This process may take anywhere from a few hours to a few days. If the problem is severe, you may have to call in a technician to fix the machine which again, may take a few days. In the meantime, you have one set of lot on hold not to mention all of the other lots that could have been processed in the time the machine was out of order. So, while a delay or a missed milestone may sound like a good thing intuitively, on paper its just holding things up. In the end, the fewer parts you get out of the door, the less money you make.

This is a really interesting topic to discuss. I understand your point that missing a milestone in a project means company loses money, bad reputation etc. However, this is not always the case. I believe it really depends on the situation or project. For example, during a capstone project, we had missed several milestones, which resulted in pushing back the deadline. Also, we had to work extra hours outside of classroom and work independent of each other to complete the task efficiently and accurately. However, in the end, we had a successful project to present. On the other side, in a manufacturing company, missing a milestone can lead to a great failure. In some situations, milestone is depended on few other tasks, and this is when it hurts the company in losing its reputation in the market. All in all, missing a milestone can be really challenging for a company and in some cases, it can also lead to a better product avoiding situations like product recalls.

Though no one likes to miss milestones, as many of our classmates mentioned, I agree with your statement. Milestones do serve as checkpoints to ensure the project is on track. In my senior design class where we are currently working on a year long development we encounter many issues that may delay or even cause us to miss milestones and this often carries to other aspects of the project. However, they are often motivators to meet the next and continue to improve and make progress.

I don't think missing a major milestone can particular effect future success of a product/project, delays should be anticipated and addressed in a timely fashion. Usually project managers incorporate potential delays/setbacks within their timelines, because they do happen. Now is the setback is on something major that could've been prevented or addressed earlier, that could potentially effect the bussiness reputation amongst it's customers.

Chris