A Little History – The Roots of Stage-Gate
Today’s Stage-Gate model was originally conceived in the early 1980s, the result of several studies observing what successful product development project teams did. The analogy is that of watching video replays of football games, analyzing the videos, and then trying to understand how winning teams win. We looked carefully, and saw patterns emerge – we called them "critical success factors" or factors that distinguish the winning teams. Next, these patterns of success factors were integrated into a game-plan or unified model designed to drive new products to market. That’s how Stage-Gate was born. A series of large sample success/failure studies then followed and identified yet other factors, practices and behaviors that lead to success; these too were built into Stage-Gate.
The name Stage-Gate first appeared in print in 1988. Since then – and after many research studies, in-depth investigations, articles, books and company implementations – Stage-Gate has evolved considerably, and now has become the most popular method globally for driving new products to market.