Like other project and portfolio management (PPM) applications, Primavera P6 activities can be represented either as tasks or as milestones. A milestone is an activity of zero duration, marking a point in time rather than a period of time.
Primavera differs from other PPM applications in that only two types of milestones are allowed:
- A Start Milestone, representing the beginning of a project, which has a start date but no finish date.
- A Finish Milestone, representing the end of a project, which has a finish date but no start date.
To create one of these two milestones in Primavera P6...
- Right-click on an existing line in your plan (or, if this is a brand-new project, simply right-click on the project summary task, as shown below). Choose Add.
- By default, this adds a 5-day task named "New Activity" to your project plan.
- In order to turn this task into a Start Milestone or a Finish Milestone, go to the Details window. This is probably on the bottom half of your screen, but if not, go to View > Show on Bottom > Details.
- On the General tab of the Details window, find the Activity Type dropdown menu. Change the selected value from Task Dependent to either Start Milestone or Finish Milestone (in this case, we’ll use Start Milestone).
- Up above on the project plan, you’ll notice that the duration has changed to 0 days (this cannot be modified for a milestone), and the finish date has been eliminated.
- We’ll finish by giving our new milestone a better name, in this case, "Project kickoff." This is also accomplished from the General tab of the Details window, on the top row of controls.
With that, our milestone setup is complete.