Looking forward to hearing your thoughts about that particular book. It has some great information in it despite the sometimes repetative writing style.

In anycase, I think we could stand to be a lot more brutal about killing our own games. Much better to kill a game at the prototype stage on your own terms than wait for the publisher to kill it late in development and let it take the whole studio with it.

Winning at New Products: http://www.amazon.com/Winning-New-Products-Accelerating-Process/dp/0738204633

I can see where stage gate ideas can be easily mixed up with waterfall ideas. The original concept came about during the 80′s before even Lean Manufacturing had really matured in American companies. So you’ll find some of the typical stages mentioned in the literature matching onto waterfall names. However, the important idea is that there are stages and gates, not that you follow the exact model used 20 years ago by Proctor and Gamble for developing new types of cookies. In later writings, the 3rd generation processes emphasize flexibility as a key attribute.

Because stage gate is a framework that works across multiple industries, there are lots of possible implementations. I’ll be the first to admit that there are bad business decisions made in the name of the stage gate process, just as is the case when any good idea is adopted by large numbers of people. I mentioned a few common mistakes in the paper. The trick is to take the potent ideas like options-based portfolio management or success metrics and adapt them to your business.

I like the paper you mentioned. It is good to see this researching happening.

take care
Danc.

This article on the Agile Journal refers offhand to both Stage-Gate and waterfall as though they were synonyms. In fact, everything (online) I can find to read on Stage-Gate shows it as being somewhere between exactly the same and almost the same as waterfall.

What are you reading that points out Stage-Gate and agile being used together, or stages being used iteratively? I’m just not finding it.

As you may know from my other essays, I’m a huge fan of various agile process and put a big emphasis on both prototyping and rapid iteration. The stage gate process maps quite nicely onto practices like Scrum or XP and brings a lot of common lessons to the table

Start small: Do the simplest thing possible. You may learn something.

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: Try out multiple ideas early on. Since you can’t know which ideas will pan out, it makes a lot of sense to try several and then invest further in the promising ones.

Test regularly: The whole point of the stage gate process is to have formal testing *throughout* the development process, not at the end.

Understand what success looks like: Even the most rapid iterative process is useless if you are making random changes that do no improve the product. By understanding what success looks like, you can iteratively guide your products towards that that goal.

Invest late, not early: Product development is a learning process. You might as well invest money as you discover success mechanics, settings, etc instead of dumping a wad on hand waving specs early on.

It is also worth noting that just because there are big formal stages that are used for large scale portfolio management, there is nothing in the process that rejects the hundreds or thousands of iterative loops within each development stage. In fact, I’d recommend it since it helps teams meet the gate criteria more successfully.

Stage gate has some serious potential for helping us create innovative product. It brings portfolio management out of the darkness of Skull&Bones green lighting committees and encourages that smart companies set aside money to build new-to-the world, high payoff products.

It is worth taking another look at the concept and imagining how it might fit into the iterative work flow you so rightly target as critical to success in our industry. I’m guessing you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how the two compliment each other.

Appreciate the article and the opportunity to start a conversation.

take care
Danc.