As stated in earlier parts of this series, milestones are installed to provide reference points along the road. This can be used to reassure travelers that the proper path is being followed, and to indicate either distance travelled or the remaining distance to a destination.’
In Lean Agile, there are lots of ‘milestones’ along the journey… reference points along the road.
Usual milestones are ‘release’ and ‘demo’.
Iteration/sprint goal: achieving your sprint goal (a milestone) is a significant event worth celebrating for … your team is one goal (milestone) nearer to reaching the PI Objective (a major milestone)!
Sprint zero is a starting point milestone… like the zero milestone at Washington D.C. or the golden milestone in the Roman Empire era.
Team’s Agility health or maturity: crawl, walk, run, jump, fly. These are milestones.
Knowing what to do to get to the next milestone is important in team’s agility maturity journey and improvement.
Team development stages is a set of milestones.
What other milestones do you see along the road of your Lean Agile journey? Go celebrate those once you get to each! But don’t stop there… keep moving forward… and ask yourself and your teammates what you all have to do to get to the next milestone… and check (using your roadmap and compass (intent)) if you are on-track or off-track vis-a-vis where you want to be next and vis-vis your destination.
