Three ways to track your Milestones in Jira

Manage Milestone in Jira

Milestones in Jira projects are significant events or branching decision points. They mark a point within the life cycle of a project and help to measure how much work has been done towards the ultimate goal.

Jira doesn’t have its own Milestones feature. You can operate by release dates, due dates or start/end date. Many people find visualizing project milestones to be difficult, but this shouldn’t stop you from trying. One of the easiest ways is with a Milestones Panel in ActivityTimeline.

Milestones Panel is an additional panel appearing above the team members’ timelines. By default, Milestones Panel is hidden from the dashboard. To open it, click on a flag icon on the right panel toolbar.

How to set and track a deadline with your Jira tickets

Time and our brain could be tricky for us sometimes. We perceive a time depending on a situation and we view a time as a progression of a successive event.

That’s why interrupted and uncompleted tasks (even thoughts) could be evoked better than uninterrupted and completed tasks. It’s called The Zeigarnik effect. As your brain tries to close an uncompleted task and this side of the effect could be pretty uncomfortable and annoying.

The better way to use this effect to your advantage is to set micro-goals or milestones. Milestones will lead you to the final point of the project. It’s a great way to plan and track your sprint, keep your eye on a releases and deadlines.

In your ActivityTimeline, you can set a due date in the Milestones panel on a flag icon on the right panel toolbar.

There are three ways how to create a Milestone:

1. Create new Milestone on Milestones Panel by clicking on it;
2. Set a Due Date in Jira issue;
3. Select a project to see Fix Versions.

1. Create a new Milestone

In order to add a new milestone click on the required cell in the milestone panel. In the opened Create New Item dialog one can add a new:

• Milestone
• Event
• Release
• Delivery 
• Deadline.

2. Set a Due date for Jira ticket

Every Jira ticket can be your own milestone. Do to that just click on a ticket (on a Dashboard or on a Left Panel), click on a “Schedule” link and set Due Date. This date will be your deadline.
To activate this issue go to “Administration” -> “Timeline Panel Settings” -> “Display Issues on Milestones Panel based on Due date”.

How to track Release dates on Milestones Panel in Jira

Time and planning is a huge part of managing a project. It could make a big deal or lose it. Proper mapping out the Release date, following the schedule, and setting a Milestone to help you hit deadlines.

ActivityTimeline automatically reads the Fix Versions of a selected project. Fix Version is based on the Release Date and displayed on a Milestones Panel.

3. Select a project to see Fix Versions

ActivityTimeline has a great option on how to track your project’s fix version on your dashboard. Fix version is provided by default in Jira. You can track all Release dates of every version (by fix version).

To check the Fix Version select a Project in the drop-down. ActivityTimeline automatically reads the Fix Versions of a selected project. The task will be scheduled on a Release date on Milestones Panel.

To manage a Jira versions click on a link icon displaying on a task.

To change Release date click on the link to open a Jira “Project settings → Versions” page.

To know more about ActivityTimeline useful features a Demo or try a trial version.