Framework library · Innovation and product

Stage-Gate process

Stage-Gate splits the path from idea to launch into stages of work, each followed by a gate at which senior people decide whether the project has earned the next round of money. Each stage is designed to remove the uncertainties that matter most at that point. Each gate judges the project against criteria set before it arrives, so weak projects are stopped early, while stopping is still cheap.

LevelIntermediate
TimeMonths to years for one product; an hour or two per gate meeting
Who to involveA gatekeeping group of senior people who control the resources, with the project team presenting at each gate.
Also calledphase-gate process, stage and gate process, gate reviews, idea to launch process, Cooper Stage-Gate

Use it when

  • Several new products compete for the same engineering, capital or launch capacity and you need a consistent way to decide which continue.
  • Projects keep going because nobody decided to stop them, and late failures are expensive.
  • Launches fail on things a checklist would have caught, such as billing, support or regulatory approval.
  • The board wants a clear view of where each product in development stands and what it has proved.

Avoid it when

  • The work is a small, low-risk change. Run it through the normal release process; gates add weeks for no benefit.
  • Demand is so uncertain that the business case would be guesswork. Run Lean Startup experiments first and bring the evidence to the business case gate.
  • Software is being developed in short increments with users. Gates can sit above an agile team, but gating every sprint slows it to a halt.
  • Gatekeepers will not kill projects. A process where every gate says go is a reporting ritual.

How to run it

  1. Define the stages and what each must prove

    A common sequence runs from scoping, through the business case, development and testing, to launch. Write what each stage must deliver to its gate.

  2. Set the gate criteria in advance

    Must-meet criteria (strategic fit, legal, safety) that kill on failure, and should-meet criteria scored to compare projects. Publish them so teams know what they will be judged on.

  3. Name the gatekeepers

    The people who own the resources the next stage needs. If they cannot commit money and people at the meeting, they are not gatekeepers.

  4. Hold each gate as a decision, not a progress report

    Go (fund the next stage), kill, hold (sound but not now) or recycle (redo part of this stage). Record the decision and the conditions.

  5. Make the business case gate the hardest

    It is the last point where stopping is cheap. Ask for customer evidence and a financial case, not a slide of ambitions.

  6. Review after launch

    Six to eighteen months on, compare results with the business case and feed the lessons back into the gate criteria.

Work through it

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Mistakes to avoid

  • Gates that never kill. If nearly every project passes every gate, the criteria are not being applied.
  • Loading early stages with paperwork. Scoping should take days or weeks, not months.
  • Letting a project skip a gate because a senior sponsor wants it. The gate exists for exactly that project.
  • Judging projects one at a time without looking at the whole portfolio, so the gates pass more work than there are people to do it.

Where it comes from

Developed by Robert G. Cooper from research into what separated successful new products from failures, including "An Investigation into the New Product Process: Steps, Deficiencies, and Impact" with Elko J. Kleinschmidt (Journal of Product Innovation Management 3(2), 1986) and his book Winning at New Products (1986). He set out the method in "Stage-Gate Systems: A New Tool for Managing New Products", Business Horizons 33(3), 1990. Source.

Stage-Gate is a registered trademark of Stage-Gate Inc. (Stage-Gate International). This page describes the process independently and is not endorsed by Stage-Gate Inc.

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