Agile and Stage-Gate: how they relate to innovation performance

While innovation ranks higher than ever on the strategic agenda of top managers and R&D spend continues to grow, the failure to meet time, cost, and quality targets remains high. Innovation studies indicate inappropriate approaches to the management of the New Product Development (NPD) process as a key reason for failure. A new class of process models has emerged that operates differently from the conventional and linear methods. The latter, including Stage-Gate and Waterfall, prescribe detailed product specifications and front-end plans, sequential phases, development activities adhering to agreed specifications and strictly defined criteria. In contrast, flexible models, such as Agile and lean start-up, advocate minimal up-front planning, adapting product design to changing requirements until late in the NPD process, involving users early through prototyping and frequent testing, organizing development work in iterations of time-boxed design-build-test cycles.