When you want to develop a blockchain project or product without the right tools, the product development and implementation process can be risky, chaotic, and ultimately expensive.

Choosing the right planning method is important for all organizations, and approaches can vary depending on the complexity of both your project and your organization.

So, is the stage gate process right for you?

In this article, I will take you through the different steps of the product development stage gate process and explain the best ways for you to implement the stage gate in your product development.

What Is The Product Development Stage Gate Process? 

The product development Stage-Gate process, also known as Stage-Gate, is a project management technique that provides a new product development roadmap from concept to launch. Each project is divided into distinct phases, each phase separated by decision points or “Gates”.

What Are The Steps In The Stage Gate Process?

In this section, we will take a closer look at the whole process that the product development Stage-Gate process provides and how it benefits project managers and decision-makers to find the best option. Continue your product or project development process.

7 Steps In The Stage-Gate Process

When you want to develop your product, you will have to go through six stages, from concept to launch. There are six steps and five gates in the typical process.

Stage 0: Idea Generation

This is the discovery or ideation stage. This can include different stages based on the methods a company can use to find new product development ideas and improve processes to implement. Can get cross-departmental ideas, market research, feedback from customers, suppliers, product teams, and more.

At Satom, we have a Cat On chain product with the idea of accelerating the development of the platform through strategic investment. Besides, it also contributes to the ecosystem by building a leading entertainment content infrastructure, including businesses, investing in new technology, especially blockchain for Gen Z.

Stage 1: Scoping

At this stage, you focus on assessing and understanding Product-Market fit. Usually, we will study the strengths and weaknesses of the product, the type of product to offer to the customer, its competition, and so on.

Market research helps to collate essential data before moving on to Blockchain product development. The collated data will give an idea of the solutions available in the market. In addition, this paragraph plays a role in providing better solutions to gain a competitive advantage.

Stage 2: Build Business Case And Plan

After you go through the first step, the next step is to build the business case, and project plan and evaluate the feasibility of the product. This phase typically includes establishing product requirements and definitions, assessing legal and regulatory requirements, and establishing project emergency identification criteria and conditions. Typically, you will also work on a detailed development and launch plan and timeline during this period.

At this stage of blockchain product development, you need to establish requirements, evaluate legal and regulatory requirements, and establish conditions and criteria for defining a blockchain project emergency. Typically, companies will also work on a detailed development and launch plan and timeline during this period.

Stage 3: Development

The stage gate process uses the plans from the previous steps to implement the added plan. The development phase can include some initial design and development, testing, and finally a prototype. Marketing plans are also set to work and must be aligned with the defined goals for the initiative. The progress of the product’s development is reviewed during development to ensure the project is on track.

Stage 4: Testing And Validation

The product is validated during this Stage-Gate Process step. The project’s financial elements, client acceptance, and associated processes are reviewed along with the product itself. Testing in the field, in the lab, and on the market are all necessary. 

With the proliferation of blockchain technology products, we need to be ready to adapt existing testing strategies to blockchain technology. Testing these blockchains is essential since it is very complicated to mine a blockchain. Since large transactions go through processes such as encryption and decryption, the process should go smoothly without any errors.

Stage 5: Launch

The product launch is the final step after you have passed all the previous gates. You will have to come up with a marketing strategy to stimulate customer demand for the product. You must also predict market demand for the new product to determine the initial scale of production. Part of the launch phase is training salespeople and support teams to familiarize themselves with the product so that it can help with sales. 

You also need to take into account the price of the product. They should avoid setting prices too low or too high for the potential market. And the final work of the launch is product distribution. Carefully consider as well as predict the sales ability of distributors or agents before making a choice.

A smooth launch process that includes effective marketing and a well-equipped sales team will speed product adoption and accelerate time to profit.

This is a fairly common standard for blockchain and web3 technology development companies. To predict errors and provide fixes after receiving customer feedback and complaints about problems. Many developers often prioritize support for business users over general users.

Gates

We will take a closer look at the gates in the Stage Gate process that covers the many possible points, factors, and outcomes. The evaluation of the quality of a product development idea includes:

A gate can lead to one of five outcomes: continue, abort, hold, regenerate, or continue condition.

The gate has a general structure consisting of 3 main elements:  inputs, criteria, and outputs.

• Inputs: is what project managers and teams used to make decisions. These products are decided at the output of the front gate and are based on a standard menu of products at each gate.
• Criteria: Questions or metrics on which a project is evaluated to determine outcomes and prioritize decisions.
• Outputs: For every gate, the outcome is provided by the output. The kinds of outputs that can happen include decisions about whether a product should be improved, abandoned, or kept on hold for the time being. Go, kill, hold, recycle, and conditional go are just a few examples of the available outputs.

Possible results leading from a gate

Multiple outcomes may come from a project that is being evaluated. Products can have five of the outcomes listed below when they pass through various gates.

• Go: It seems sense to move forward with the project.
• Kill: The project is discontinued because it is not feasible to pursue it.
• Hold: The project has to be paused for some reason and may resume later.
• Recycle: The project can be further developed after a few tweaks.
• Conditional go: In order for the project to move forward, a number of requirements must be satisfied, such as the creation of a recycled product.

Pros and Cons of Stage Gate Product Development

Pros

There are several advantages to project managers using the product development stage-gate process to find the most promising products and eliminate those that are not worth the resource investment.

• Uses the most effective techniques for product development, from ideation to launch. 
• Increase the efficiency of project work while maintaining the high level of quality that customers expect. 
• It involves a cross-functional team, concurrent engineering, and periodic business reviews. 
• Solutions that are fully customizable, integrated, and adapted to your working style. Strong collaboration between people and systems. 
• Risk management and simulation tools support prudent decision-making. 
• Modern scheduling and resource management tools ensure on-time delivery.

Cons

• Phase Gate ignores the connections between technology and commercial prospects.  
• It sometimes gives overhead to the project controller with gates and phase Stage-Gate” pros responsibilities. 
• It interferes between innovation and creativity like iterative projects 
• Phase Gates tends to force fundamental project decisions to be made prematurely. 
• Phase gate needs to steer on time rather than on result/scope, increasing the product development project’s risk profile.
• The service design element, when joined with product innovation, creates experience innovation, which is excluded from the phase gate.

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, I recommend that the stage gate process should be adopted as the first step by companies that don’t have an existing product development process or companies that really struggle with discipline and chaos. But after including the stage gate model in your product development process, start to use the product development stage gate process to reduce the steps to achieve high efficiency.

New product development is never easy. This is a risky and challenging item that needs the synchronous coordination of all departments in the business. If you are having difficulty developing a blockchain project. Come to Satom Venture Studio. At Satom, we provide and support you with process strategies to build the perfect project. Besides, we also support human and financial needs for you. Contact us at the following address, hello@satom.vc.