Stage-Gate Model

Abstract

In today’s society, for every large organization or company it is essential to have a strong Portfolio Management (link), that works to its purpose. In order to achieve this, it is critical for the company to have implemented the Stage-Gate Model, with the necessary guidelines on how the process is formal structured.

Stage-Gate was developed by Robert G. Cooper in the 1980´s. The model works as a structured method for product innovation, program or project, bringing ideas from concept to launch. The model consists of five different stages and between each of these stages, there is gates. Gates works as “decision points”, or milestones, where the deliverables is brought up for quality control. This is most likely to be done by the top management, or a decision-making team. When evaluating the deliverables, they can either decide if the project should go forward, stop, hold or redo the current stage.

Stages can be seen as a set of activities. In every stage, there is different activities that must be done, in order to move on to the next. Moreover, these activities (not stages, important) can be completed in parallel and are cross-functional, thus increasing efficiency and effectiveness. The longer out in the stage process the project moves further, the more increases the cost and additionally the uncertainty reduces. The different stages are: 1. Scope 2. Building Business Case 3. Development 4. Testing & Validation 5. Launch

The intention of this article is to share light on using Stage-Gate Model in Portfolio Management, describing the method and to show an example on which activities that must be performed in the stages. Furthermore, to sum up this article, strengths and weaknesses will be discussed, as well as a conclusion on the subject.