MTA Demo (Practice Milestone Trend Analysis)


With this MTA demo you can practice using the (visualization) tool MTA - milestone trend analysis.



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It works like this:

Upon loading this page, you see a table

  • with the milestone names (first column),
  • their planned dates (second column),
  • the serial numbers of the dates of reporting (first row),
  • the dates of reporting (second row), and
  • the actual dates as they are reported at each date of reporting (all the remaining input cells, in the violet table area).

Below the table there is the resulting MTA diagram.

Please note that, in the example below, we interpret all "dates" in days of project run time. For example, project start date is day 1, and the planned date of milestone "Module 1" is day 43 of the project.

(Similarly, we could interpret those "dates", for example, in weeks of project run time. Then, the planned date of milestone "Module 1" would be week 43.)


How to read the example, below:

Project duration is planned to be 85 days and there are 5 milestones. We have bi-weekly project status meetings, the first one on day 1, at project start. Then, we planned to hold another 6 status meetings, including the last one for milestone "System complete".

So far, status meetings #1 (on day 15), #2 (on day 29) and #3 (on day 43) happened already.

  • In the first status meeting on day 15, the forecasts for the four remaining milestones are still as originally planned.
  • With the second status meeting on day 29, we received the message that milestone "System design" was achieved, and milestones "Module 1" and "Module 2" would be delayed, each one by 7 days.
  • Today is day 43 of this project, and we just received the forecast of the three remaining milestones, "Module 1" still delayed by 7 days, "Module 2" now delayed by 14 days, and "System complete" as originally planned.

We can recognize this trend in the MTA diagram.


You can use this MTA demo tool and experiment with it, changing the given data below or entering your own examples of up to five milestones, their planned dates, the reporting dates and the actual milestone dates as they are reported during implementation of the project.


Reporting Dates
Milestone
Names		 0
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
Planned
Dates		 Actual Dates






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