Question

You are the marketing director for a financial services firm with assets of $105 billion and net income of $1.7 billion. Your company’s senior management team has identified new product development as a growth strategy. You have been selected to lead the new product development initiatives. Describe how you will present the information for the stage-gate process to manage the new product development programs. Provide an overview of the stage-gate process, benefits, and potential challenges in implementation.

Answer 1

The process focuses on innovation and is also known as the waterfall process. It is a management strategy where the leader takes initiative and divides in the project over several stages. These stages are segregated through ‘gates’ and also decision stays to whether proceed to the next stage or not.

The Stage-Gate process consists of a number of stages, which are connected to each other by gates. Each phase is formulated to collect specific information about the product developed.

Stage 0: Discovery of the product whether it is required or not.

Stage 1: scoping and evaluating product

Stage 2: business plan concept

Stage 3: Development of the product like what customers think about the product

Stage 4: testing and validation

Stage 5: launch and implementation

Relying on the size of the project, 2, 3 or all 5 stages are finalized and obtained. A project that concentrates on major product creation will achieve all 5 stages. A project with less risk will go with just stage 1 or maybe till stage 2 and developing it to stage 4. But with very small adjustments, stage 3 and stage 4 will be executed. It benefits as it focuses more attention on the quality of execution as gates are the integrity control checkpoints after every stage. It shows a complete cycle of the product in the market where no critical errors of omission and no missing steps are involved.

companies can accomplish endless problem solving ability and pay only for treatments. The stage 3 of development is the most challenging point where product is basically introduced in the market and risk is higher. But it's all about taking risk and achieving success.