Gate meetings: Gatekeeping in product development

Decision in NPD: The art of Gatekeeping

A document that describes the principles of gatekeeping and the agenda for the typical gate meeting

The gates must work

Gates have input, criteria and output
Scheduling and preparing for the meeting

Conducting the gate meeting: a typical agenda

Part A: The briefing period
Part B: Evaluation and debriefing
Part C: The go/kill/hold/recycle decision and the decision on an action plan

Speeding the approval process:
essential rules for professional gatekeeping

Gatekeepers are the critical key persons
Essential rules for professional gatekeeping leading to speedy projects
Our scoring model for gates

Example: Stage-Gate System
	Strategy & Portfolio Management
	Stage-Gate Principles
	Stage-Gate Checklists
	Idea Submission
	Gatekeeping
	Implemen- tation plan

More about gatekeeping

The gates must work
The gates are the quality control points of the Stage-Gate process. They ensure that the projects are done as they should. They also make it highly visible which projects our company has committed resources to. Finally gates are points where tough business decisions are made. Good and important projects are properly resourced and mediocre projects are killed.

If the gates work, the Stage-Gate process works. If the gates are in trouble, the whole Stage-Gate process is in trouble.

Gates have input, criteria and output

The input is delivered by the project leader. The gatekeepers evaluate the project dealing with three main issues:

Is this the right project on which to spend our scarce resources? Is it a good business proposition?
Is the execution of the project being handled well? Are the deliverables to the gate in good shape?
Is the proposed action plan reasonable? Are the resources, proposed people, money, and time appropriate and realistic?

The criteria are the questions the gatekeepers use to judge the project on.
The output is the decision the gatekeepers make about the project at the end of the meeting.
The input, the criteria and the output of each stage are specified in the templates.

Some definitions

Gates:
Go/Kill decision points in the Stage-Gate^® new product process where resources are allocated to projects and poor projects killed before additional resources are wasted

Gatekeepers:
A Management Team of decision-makers and resource owners responsible for facilitating the rapid commercialisation of selected projects

Gatekeeping:
Management practices, behaviours, rules and procedures that govern decision-making & project facilitation designed to enable Project Teams to move good projects forward to rapid and effective commercialisation