When I worked at a big technology company, we had a stage gate process on steroids. This thing had 16 different gates, with full enforcement of each. What was good about this structure was that it showed the distinct cadences within a project that the team needed to account for. I liked that it tried to account for these cadence differences--most frameworks that I've seen don't even try.
The two main goals they were trying to achieve with this stage gate process were:
- To support stakeholder monitoring and control
- To guide the team on the path so that they do things in sequence
Monitoring and control are very important, but need to be separated from the development framework. The development framework needs to focus on the team. The "fixed points" within the framework need to guide them at a high level, but need to support their being efficient. Given this, I want to focus on minimizing the number of fixed points to maximize the team's ability to manage and adapt.
For systems, there's a necessary flow that progresses through the subsystems. In a mixed hardware/software environment, the minimum number of fixed points includes:
- Requirements/project plan lockdown
- Concept freeze (though this may realistically be part of the first line)
- Hardware freeze
- Software freeze
- Product release
I am thinking there may be additional points. For instance, the above points cover development, but not release to the factory. I haven't quite worked that out--but I'd rather start with too few than too many.
