Deliverable

Deliverable is a term used in project management to describe a tangible or intangible object produced as a result of the project that is intended to be delivered to a customer (either internal or external). A deliverable could be a report, a document, a server upgrade or any other building block of an overall project.

A deliverable may be composed of multiple smaller deliverables. It may be either an outcome to be achieved (as in "The corporation says that becoming profitable this year is a deliverable.") or an output to be provided (as in "The deliverable for the completed project consists of a special-purpose electronic device and its controlling software.").

A deliverable differs from a project milestone in that a milestone is a measurement of progress toward an output whereas the deliverable is the result of the process. For a typical project, a milestone might be the completion of a product design while the deliverable might be the technical diagram of the product.

In technical projects, deliverables can further be classified as hardware, software, or design documents.