Using Milestones 
The purpose of a milestone schedule or chart is to communicate important project dates to project sponsors, customers, functional managers and the outside world. Almost every project needs a milestone schedule. A milestone is defined as a significant achievement at a point in time.
Milestone schedules should be based on the dependencies between the activities resulting from the work packages in the work breakdown structure.
There are four steps to create a milestone schedule.
1. Always begin with the project charter to see what direction you were given by the client and sponsor. Define the start and completion dates for the project as these are major milestones. The start date would be the date that you received the charter, and the completion date is when you will give the close-out report to the sponsor.
2. Add the project plan approval date, which is the date that the project is officially approved to begin work.
3. Add any deadline dates from the charter. The deadline dates for both final and organizational deliverables are important. Do not forget to check if those are absolute deadlines or if they have flexibility. This will be helpful for the development of more detailed schedules.
4. Choose the most important interim deliverables and assign a completion date for each one. Don’t create more than say 10 to 13 milestones; if you have more than that, some of the benefits of the milestone schedule are lost.
Once the milestone schedule is complete it should be shared with the project team and other relevant stakeholders.
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