Understanding the Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA) - Part 1 of 2

In this podcast, Ricardo talks about the Milestone Trend Analysis (MTA), a very good graphical tool used in executive reports. He shows how to make it step-by-step using pencil, paper and a ruler. Don’t forget to see the presentation related to this podcast.

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Episode transcript

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Hello everybody welcome to the five minutes BM podcast. A couple of weeks ago, I was stocking about how we can report on our progress. And I spoke about the milestones and how we can use Milestone. So today I want to go more in deep in present to you a tool that I use, and I like really much it's called MTA or Milestone Trend Analysis, it's a one page graphical report about your milestones.

When I'm, I will explain to you today, you may see, Oh, it's quite complex, but it's not, it's not, it's very simple and the straightforward and its very, very visual. So what I would like to suggest to you, but it's take a blank sheet of paper and a pen and also using the room, please draw a line in the vertical. Okay. So let's, let's put maybe 10 inches okay.

In the vertical and also draw in the orange line from the top of this vertical line. OK. In a perpendicular away and not a line that has the same, its very important. And then it must have the same Zach, the length of the vertical. What? And if it's 10 inches on the vertical 10 inch on the horizontal one. Okay. If it's 15, 15, and then you need to connect the bottom part of the vertical line with the right part of the horizontal line, creating a triangle.

Okay. And this will be an exhaust illustrious because the vertical and the horizontal lines have exactly the same length. Okay. So now let's suppose that our projects has 20 days. So what you need to do on the bottle part of the vertical line, you put one Minutes day, one on the top part of the vertical line, boot 20. Okay. First and last day of our project in the last part of the horizontal line, put one and then the right part of the horizontal line put 20.

So it is exactly one on the bottom of the vertical 20 on the right of the vertical. Then very close to this 20, you have the one on the horizontal and on the right side 20, then you can split for example, each half inch Minutes one day. So you put the same, it's very important. The same scale on the vertical and horizontal line. Okay. Then on the vertical line, do you need to put timescale Minutes the timescale from the beginning to the end of the past, and then on the horizontal line you put report timescale or status report timescale is that the timescale that you should be using two report the milestones.

It's a very important you're a project must have between five and 10 key milestones. So it's very important because instead of tracking 300 tasks on the gunshot or instead of tracking 500 boxes on your network, you will track only the key milestones. So it's very important. You, you cannot do MTA with a hundred milestones because it would be completely messy for you to understand. So usually I do between four or five, six to 10 in the critical delivery points.

And then what do I do imagine the first status report of this project, usually it's the starting date, right? The starting date is exactly the date. One on the horizontal line. On this day, you check it your project and you notice you have three milestones, milestones, a B and C and most on a he's a scuttled to be delivered on day five.

Milestone be on a date like 12 Milestone see on the 18th. So what do you do? So, okay. This one, number one on the results of the line, you will Mark five to 12 and 18. OK. On the vertical one. So of course you need to Mark the three of them in different columns or you know, with an Axe or a triangle to just to differentiate the stream milestones a, B and C.

Okay. So you know that you expect to the law, Milestone a on day five, but you don't know yet to because you are 40 on the one. So you don't know yet, but let's suppose that on day three, So you as a cutie, they want to you as a kid, to you as a cute they three and then you want to report again. Then you went to your Microsoft project or any scheduling software and your forecast that Milestone a, is now a forecast to be on day seven and not a five anymore.

Milestone B it's a still Stihl forecast. Today 12, Milestone see, move it from 18 to 19 of them on the line of the day pre you need to Mark these three points, seven, 12, and 19. Let's suppose that on day seven, you want to report again? So usually report once a week or every order. Yeah. And so on day seven, you check it again and your soul, Oh God, Milestone a day is now on day nine or Milestone be, is now on day 13.

And Milestone see you on the 20. So what happened when you have two, three, four, five points reporting points, you can create a line connecting the milestones. So look, if the line is parallel to the horizontal, which is if it's a straight line, what does this mean? It means that you are moving perfectly as planted because every reporting line, you have the same forecast for your milestone.

But if it's going app, what you can understand, you can say, oops, my project is becoming late because every time I met that look Milestone eight. Its moving from 500 up to seven to nine So I'm becoming late in a very visual way. If the line goes down means you are accelerating, you are improving. So it's a very simple and in visual way next week, I want to talk a little bit more how to analyze this. And now also I prepared for you a PowerPoint that you can download on my website, where you can see this in the more visual way.

So I hope you enjoy it this podcast and see you next week to understand and talk more about the Milestone trend analysis. See you.

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