Skip to content

Differences Between Task, Summary Tasks, and Milestone

Task

A task is a description of specific work or development. Tasks can have a team assigned, effort estimated, or be linked to purchases and revenues.

You can create as many tasks as you need for your project, however, if you want to delete a task, there are two cases in which ITM Platform does not allow task deletion:

  • The task has assigned users: If a task has users assigned, it cannot be deleted directly. To delete it, you must first unassign the users. It is important to note that a user who has reported hours to a task cannot be unassigned from it. To unlink a team member from a task, all reports from that user must be "0" for the corresponding task.

  • The task is completed: If a task is in a completed state, it cannot be deleted. To delete it, its status must be changed.

Summary Task

A summary task is a grouping of tasks into blocks or groups. The team and effort of a summary task will be the aggregate of the tasks it contains.

Summary tasks are composed of subtasks, and the way summary tasks and their subtasks are structured will define the levels and hierarchy of tasks. There may be summary tasks comprised of other summary subtasks, allowing you to create as many task levels as needed.

To group subtasks within a summary task, please ensure that the future summary task does not have any resources assigned or hours reported.

Note: Summary tasks only apply to waterfall projects. Their equivalent in agile projects would be swimlanes.

Milestone

A milestone is a reference point that marks an important event in a project and is used to monitor its progress. Milestones often depend on the completion date of predecessor tasks.

They are particularly relevant in tracking the fulfillment of project deliverables and the documentation resulting from each task. Milestones can also define specific key points in the schedule that are not necessarily linked to deliverables.

If you need to convert a task into a milestone, you can do so from the Gantt by right-clicking on the task in question and selecting 'Convert to milestone'. Please note that to convert a task into a milestone, it should not have any resources assigned.

Key Considerations When Designing a Project

When designing the project, it is essential to clearly and precisely define the scheduled tasks needed to meet the deliverables (which may be represented in the timeline through milestones). Therefore, the following aspects should be taken into account:

  • Specify and list the tasks to be performed
  • Distribute the time for task development, specifying the start and end dates for each task.
  • Sequence the tasks and define the dependencies between them.
  • Indicate the resources (human, material, technical, or financial) required for each task.