“…this new Agile-Stage-Gate hybrid approach promises to be the most significant change to our thinking about how new-product development should be done since the introduction of today`s popular gating system thirty years ago!” Robert G. Cooper wrote in the Nov/  Dec 2016 CIMS/ IMR.

CIMS How Agile Stage-Gate Works - Part 1_lr

Seeking to get the best of both worlds, leading manufacturers have borrowed agile development from the software world and integrated it with their Stage-Gate method. Typically, physical-product firms adopt some but not all elements of agile and embed them into the stages of their familiar gating process to replace the traditional product management methods.

The resulting hybrid Agile–Stage-Gate (A-SG) model delivers very positive performance results: faster response to change, higher customer satisfaction, and increased team motivation.

But no system is perfect, and pitfalls to watch out for are identified and summarized for manufacturers.