2.2 Milestone Logic as Key

This section is one-time reading, but you need to understand how the INJECT platform connects actions to consequences. Once you grasp it, your ability to create interesting and effective exercises will be boosted significantly.

What Are Milestones

Think of milestones as switches. Trainee activity in the platform flips a switch, and this activates further actions. The condition can also be set so that if a switch hasn't been flipped within a certain time, something happens anyway.

Note

Technical definition: Milestones are states in the platform that change from inactive to active (or vice versa) based on trainee actions, time passing, or instructor intervention. These state changes trigger consequences—new injects appear, hints are sent, paths branch, or scores are added. You can read more technical detail in the Exercise log format.

What milestones enable

Responsive exercises: Unlike traditional tabletop exercises that can't react to participant actions, INJECT responds dynamically. Trainees' choices and actions determine what happens next.
Multiple trigger types:
- Trainee sends email → Milestone reached → Response arrives
- Trainee uses tool → Milestone reached → Consequences follow
- Time passes without action → Milestone NOT reached → Hint sent
- Instructor evaluates trainee's textual input (form, mail) → Milestone reached → Next phase begins
Scoring mechanism: Each milestone can add points to the team's score. Learning Activities are connected to milestones—when trainees complete activities (reach milestones), they earn points.
Exercise flow control: Milestones coordinate timing and sequencing. They ensure trainees complete necessary steps before moving forward, or allow them to skip optional content.

How Milestones Can Be Activated

#1 By actions of trainees

Almost every trainee action in the platform can activate a milestone. Milestones are activated automatically once the action is performed.

Trainee sends first email to an address – this works only one time per email address. The trigger point is the act of sending, not the quality of email content. Note that email can also be evaluated by instructors; their evaluation can activate different milestones – see below.
Trainee submits any type of questionnaire – the milestone is automatically activated on submission. The content is not evaluated. Please note that free-form questionnaires can also be evaluated by instructors, who based on their evaluation can activate another milestone – see below.
Trainee selects option in a questionnaire with closed questions – when questionnaire responses are connected to milestones, different answer choices can trigger different milestones and automatic platform responses.

Example

"Do you want to communicate the situation publicly?" Options: Yes/No. If "No" is selected → Milestone "public_communication_declined" activated → Platform responds with an email from a curious journalist who learned about the situation, arriving within minutes.

This is how questionnaires function as decision points—each choice can lead to different consequences.
Tool usage – Each tool response can have its own control logic—different arguments trigger different milestones and follow-up actions. For example, a trainee uses a hypothetical tool for initiating a crisis meeting. As a result of activating a predefined milestone, the tool sends output that the meeting was initiated, but the same milestone also activates various email responses.
Trainee clicks the confirmation button – once the trainee clicks on the confirmation button, the milestone is activated.

What if trainees perform the same action twice?

The platform remembers that the milestone state has already changed. Repeated actions do not activate milestones repeatedly, nor repeatedly activate subsequent actions (send injects, etc.).

#2 By actions of instructors

Instructors can manually activate or deactivate milestones during the exercise when:

Evaluating email responses: Trainee sends an email to instructor. The instructor can choose from predefined templates for response (which can also be further customized). Each template is connected with a specific milestone. Templates can also assign different scores.
Evaluating free-form submissions: Instructors review submission based on predefined criteria and activate milestones corresponding to the met criteria. Again, their activation can result in different outcomes.
Manually activating milestones: Based on predefined guidelines, instructors can manually activate any milestone.

Helping stuck teams

This manual activation can be used when the team is stuck and the instructor decides to help by activating a milestone that enables the continuation of the exercise. However, this should not be standard practice. This situation can be avoided by design that uses hints. Design exercises with automated hints for common stuck points rather than relying on instructor manual intervention.

#3 By time

If all actions in the exercise are connected by milestones from beginning to end, you have the option to initiate a separate event, or even a chain of events, at a specified time. To achieve this, you can activate a milestone at a specific point in the exercise timeline (e.g., 20 minutes after the exercise start). This activation will trigger a new set of specific actions to occur at that moment.

Working with Milestones During Exercise Specification

During the Specify phase, you plan milestone logic—the implementation happens later in Preparation. Your task in this phase is to map out how actions connect to consequences and how the exercise flows from beginning to end.

Planning Your Exercise Chain of Events

Think of your exercise as a chain of connected events. Each inject needs a clear trigger—the milestone that makes it appear. When you place a general inject at the exercise start, you need to know what drives the exercise forward. Does the next inject appear after a set time? Will trainees click a confirmation button? Use a specific tool?

A simple chain of events

Exercise opens with a scenario briefing (general inject).
Trainees read it and click "Understood" (confirmation button activates milestone).
This triggers an email from their manager requesting situation assessment (email inject).
When trainees reply (email milestone), their manager responds with further instructions (another email inject conditioned on the previous response).

Different chains serve different learning objectives. A strategic exercise might use questionnaires to capture decisions, while a process simulation relies heavily on email exchanges and tool usage.

There's no single correct chain of events—design what serves your training goals. Below are several recommendations to keep in mind.

1. Naming Milestones Clearly

This is not a rule but a pragmatic recommendation. Use descriptive milestone names that communicate purpose. Names like team_notified_ciso or backup_system_checked help you and instructors understand exercise flow at a glance. It will also be helpful in the evaluation phase. Avoid generic labels like milestone_1 or action_complete—these become confusing when you have dozens of milestones.

2. Prevent Risk of Exercise Freezing

Linear paths create vulnerability. If trainees must complete Action A before Action B becomes available, but they never do Action A, the exercise stops. This happens more often than you'd expect, typically due to the curse of knowledge—you assume something is obvious because you designed it, but trainees don't share your perspective.

You can prevent freezing through several measures:

Test with fresh eyes — Run your exercise with people unfamiliar with your design to identify unclear instructions.
Create multiple paths — Let trainees reach the same milestone through different actions.
Design time-triggered hints — If a tool hasn't been used after 15 minutes, send a hint suggesting trainees check it.
Allow instructor intervention — Treat this as emergency backup, not standard design. If instructors must manually push exercises forward regularly, your design needs revision. List expected interventions in the instructor notes.

3. Instructors as Potential Bottlenecks

Clarify when you will need instructor interventions in the exercise. While the platform handles most exercise flow automatically, some designs require human evaluation—instructors choose email template responses, assess free-form submissions, or manually activate milestones based on quality criteria.

Be cautious with instructor-dependent progression. If an instructor manages five teams simultaneously and each team needs email evaluation to continue at the same time, some teams will wait while the instructor processes others. This creates frustrating delays and uneven experiences.

Design exercises that progress through automated milestones, reserving instructor evaluation for scoring or optional enhancements rather than critical path progression. When instructor involvement is necessary, clearly distinguish between crucial actions that block progress and optional evaluations. Document these distinctions explicitly in instructor notes (covered in the Prepare phase).

4. Prevent Risk of Early Milestone Activation

Tools create a specific risk—trainees might use them before you intended. Consider an exercise where you designed a "Contact National Authority" tool for the final phase, assuming trainees will use it only after gathering complete incident information. But a curious trainee clicks it in minute two, triggering the entire final sequence prematurely.

Prevent early activation using conditions. Make the tool available only after certain milestones are reached. The "Contact National Authority" tool becomes usable only after trainees complete incident assessment (questionnaire milestone) AND draft their initial report (email milestone). Until these conditions are met, the tool either doesn't appear or displays a message explaining prerequisites.

5. Using Conditions to Control Flow

Conditioning determines when specific injects appear based on what has (or hasn't) happened—when trainees complete certain actions, or when time passes without expected actions occurring.

You can combine multiple milestones to create sophisticated conditions. An inject might appear only after trainees use three specific tools AND submit a situation assessment. Or a warning email appears if trainees haven't contacted their CISO within 30 minutes of classifying an incident as high-severity.

Understand timing nuances when mixing time-based and action-based conditions. If you set an inject to appear when 20 minutes have passed AND a specific tool is used, the inject won't necessarily appear at minute 20. It appears at any point after 20 minutes once the tool is used—which might be minute 25, 35, or never. If you need something to happen at a specific time regardless of other conditions, use time alone as the trigger.

6. When to Use Branching (and When Not To)

Conditions enable branching—creating multiple parallel paths based on trainee choices. The temptation is strong: "I'll create five storylines based on different decisions!"

Resist this temptation in most cases. Creating many parallel paths means spending five times the effort on content that each team experiences only once—they see roughly 20% of your work. Comparing team performance becomes complicated when teams followed different paths. Post-exercise discussion suffers when teams can't relate to each other's experiences.

Branching makes sense in specific contexts:

Exercises designed for multiple runs where you want variety
Scenarios with a single critical fork—one decision fundamentally changes everything, and you have resources to support both paths fully
To achieve specific learning objectives

For most exercises, maintain a primary chain with strategic decision points that add conditional responses without creating entirely separate paths. Trainees make a critical choice, and the platform responds with relevant consequences, but all teams ultimately progress through the same major phases.