Activities and milestones

Activities assign a named piece of program work to a person, with a due date and a status from planned to completed. Milestones give the program a due date, completion date and evidence attachment. The two records serve different questions: who is doing the work, and what proves a program milestone was finished.

• Assign the work. The Program Officer links each activity to its program and a person in People, with a due date and current status.
• Follow the due date. The assigned person and Program Officer use Open Activities to find work still planned, approved or in progress.
• Prove completion. The Program Officer records the activity completion date and keeps the attachment on the linked milestone, where the Reviewer can inspect it.

A Program Officer assigns an activity to a principal investigator as an award becomes active. The activity enters the in-progress state, while a related milestone has a due date later in the period. When the work ends, the officer records the activity as completed and attaches the milestone evidence before marking its completion date.

Agree which tasks deserve Activities and which outcomes deserve Milestones. Confirm who owns an activity when a person leaves, and what evidence is sufficient for a milestone. The project team should use the program link on each record rather than repeating program names in free text.

Plan the first operating cycle before using these records for reporting.

Open a due milestone and the related activity for a pilot program. Check the activity owner, due date and current status. Inspect the milestone attachment and completion date together. A date without the corresponding evidence should prompt a review before the program is considered complete.

A program can have several activities with different owners while one milestone records the evidence for a shared result. During a weekly review, open the activity list by due date, then inspect the related milestone separately. The Program Officer can follow up with the assigned person before the due date, and the Reviewer can ask for the actual attachment when the milestone is reported complete. This keeps an activity status from standing in for proof of the program result.

• Open Activities — Shows assigned program work that has not reached Completed, with its owner and due date.
• Open Milestones — Shows dated program milestones so the team can inspect completion dates and attachments.

See the process and check the record model.