Accendo Reliability

Your Reliability Engineering Professional Development Site

  • Home
  • About
    • Contributors
  • Reliability.fm
    • Speaking Of Reliability
    • Rooted in Reliability: The Plant Performance Podcast
    • Quality during Design
    • Way of the Quality Warrior
    • Critical Talks
    • Dare to Know
    • Maintenance Disrupted
    • Metal Conversations
    • The Leadership Connection
    • Practical Reliability Podcast
    • Reliability Matters
    • Reliability it Matters
    • Maintenance Mavericks Podcast
    • Women in Maintenance
    • Accendo Reliability Webinar Series
  • Articles
    • CRE Preparation Notes
    • on Leadership & Career
      • Advanced Engineering Culture
      • Engineering Leadership
      • Managing in the 2000s
      • Product Development and Process Improvement
    • on Maintenance Reliability
      • Aasan Asset Management
      • AI & Predictive Maintenance
      • Asset Management in the Mining Industry
      • CMMS and Reliability
      • Conscious Asset
      • EAM & CMMS
      • Everyday RCM
      • History of Maintenance Management
      • Life Cycle Asset Management
      • Maintenance and Reliability
      • Maintenance Management
      • Plant Maintenance
      • Process Plant Reliability Engineering
      • ReliabilityXperience
      • RCM Blitz®
      • Rob’s Reliability Project
      • The Intelligent Transformer Blog
      • The People Side of Maintenance
      • The Reliability Mindset
    • on Product Reliability
      • Accelerated Reliability
      • Achieving the Benefits of Reliability
      • Apex Ridge
      • Metals Engineering and Product Reliability
      • Musings on Reliability and Maintenance Topics
      • Product Validation
      • Reliability Engineering Insights
      • Reliability in Emerging Technology
    • on Risk & Safety
      • CERM® Risk Insights
      • Equipment Risk and Reliability in Downhole Applications
      • Operational Risk Process Safety
    • on Systems Thinking
      • Communicating with FINESSE
      • The RCA
    • on Tools & Techniques
      • Big Data & Analytics
      • Experimental Design for NPD
      • Innovative Thinking in Reliability and Durability
      • Inside and Beyond HALT
      • Inside FMEA
      • Integral Concepts
      • Learning from Failures
      • Progress in Field Reliability?
      • R for Engineering
      • Reliability Engineering Using Python
      • Reliability Reflections
      • Testing 1 2 3
      • The Manufacturing Academy
  • eBooks
  • Resources
    • Accendo Authors
    • FMEA Resources
    • Feed Forward Publications
    • Openings
    • Books
    • Webinars
    • Journals
    • Higher Education
    • Podcasts
  • Courses
    • 14 Ways to Acquire Reliability Engineering Knowledge
    • Reliability Analysis Methods online course
    • Measurement System Assessment
    • SPC-Process Capability Course
    • Design of Experiments
    • Foundations of RCM online course
    • Quality during Design Journey
    • Reliability Engineering Statistics
    • Quality Engineering Statistics
    • An Introduction to Reliability Engineering
    • Reliability Engineering for Heavy Industry
    • An Introduction to Quality Engineering
    • Process Capability Analysis course
    • Root Cause Analysis and the 8D Corrective Action Process course
    • Return on Investment online course
    • CRE Preparation Online Course
    • Quondam Courses
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Live Events
  • Calendar
    • Call for Papers Listing
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Webinar Calendar
  • Login
    • Member Home

by Robert Allen Leave a Comment

Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

Phase and Gate Structure for New Product Development

In previous articles we defined an element of lean as a phase and gate structure for new product development.  This assumes a waterfall approach to the project (versus agile product development).

A new product life cycle phase gate structure might entail, for example: “Definition, Concept, Design, Verification, Qualification, Production and End-of-Life”.  (Your organization might decide on different phase names.)

There’s an apparent contradiction in using a waterfall project approach and calling it lean project management, however.  A goal of any lean process is to work toward ‘single piece’ or continuous flow: agile product development is more like ‘single piece flow’ of information, versus waterfall which is more like ‘batch processing’ of information.

Even so, let’s explore how a waterfall phase-gate structure for new product development can enable a lean approach for certain types of projects or project management organizations:

  1. Enables Project Approval – enables the project sponsor(s) or steering committee to prevent rogue projects from advancing further and better align resources to the most important (approved) projects.
  2. Enables Project Planning – the established structure helps resources ‘speak the same language’ about where the project is at, and standardize a work breakdown structure (WBS) according to the project phases.  Also, project planning can be ‘goal driven’ whereby interim goals (completion of a given phase) can be planned and executed.  High-level schedule compliance can also be monitored by establishing phase gate schedules and triggering interim reviews if a gate schedule is missed.
  3. Enables Resource Management – given an established sequence of phases, skill sets can be assigned according to the structure.  With several projects and high-level planning using a phase-gate structure, critical organizational skill set gaps can be identified.  (Alignment of resources and reducing bottlenecks is a significant enabler of establishing and overall lean enterprise.)
  4. Enables Project Governance – a gate review upon the completion of a phase allows the steering committee to review the project quality, completeness of the phase exited, and ensure sponsorship support for the (next phase) plan.  Governance could also include what the project team needs to be successful considering project constraints of cost, time and scope.  This is also be an effective ‘escalation path’ which prevents projects from languishing.

Remember that we’re investing work-effort into project governance to enable more valuable projects to be completed faster.  This is also a cultural enabler; project governance can enable leadership and empower and recognize teamwork.

Also note the above enablers don’t necessarily slow things down.  If constraints prohibit agile product development processes, scrum or sprints might still be employed where possible (ie a hybrid model).

Alternatively, project sponsors may choose to limit risk with strict governance and prevent the team from moving into the next development phase until the current phase is complete.  This may slow things down, of course, but reduce risk….(speed vs. risk).

Meanwhile, even if you have an existing phase and gate framework, there are likely many opportunities to take advantage of the above enablers and improve overall project/program management for your enterprise.

Filed Under: Articles, on Leadership & Career, Product Development and Process Improvement Tagged With: agile product development, customer value, Design for Six Sigma, design value chain, lean product development, Lean Project Management, New Product Development, portfolio analysis, project governance, Project Management, requirements management, resource management

About Robert Allen

Robert Allen has over 25 years of professional experience in the areas of product development, process improvement and project management. Rob was a key contributor to numerous deployments of lean sigma and project management organizations, most notably with Honeywell and TE Connectivity. Included in Rob’s experience are multiple certifications and over 25 years of practice in the development, teaching, execution, and leadership of product lifecycle, lean product development, DFSS, lean six sigma, project management, systems engineering and supply chain.

« Incemlpote dtaa set anaysils
Gear Pump Operation & Maintenance »

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Articles by Rob Allen
in the Product Development and Process Improvement series

Join Accendo

Receive information and updates about articles and many other resources offered by Accendo Reliability by becoming a member.

It’s free and only takes a minute.

Join Today

Join PD&PI

Your email is safe and the opt-in here provides your permission to send messages concerning the PD&PI article list plus special announcements. Privacy Policy

Recent Posts

  • test
  • test
  • test
  • Your Most Important Business Equation
  • Your Suppliers Can Be a Risk to Your Project

© 2025 FMS Reliability · Privacy Policy · Terms of Service · Cookies Policy