Yesterday the lock on my apartment door broke. I went to a hardware store and got myself one of the new Mul-T-Lock locks. Then I asked my father to team up with me and install the lock.
Not so much to my amazement, but just to prove the point, the 3.5 hour installation (including steel plate on the exterior of the door and other minor parts) went exactly the way any web project goes – with tests, beta versions and live releases. We measured the holes and distance between them, we put the lock on the door to see how it would look like (created a mash-up), we drilled the holes and installed parts of the lock without fully tightening screws (there’s your beta version) to see if key is able to rotate and the lock is, indeed functioning, then we tightened the screws and moved on to a next part of installation (there is your milestone).
The point I am trying to make here is no matter what you do – there is always a little project management going on.