Free Phase-Gate Product Development Template
Phase-gate development works when the gates are real decisions and fails when they are status meetings. This template schedules six months from concept to market with four explicit gate reviews, each one a go, no-go, or recycle with the reviewers and conditions recorded, plus the design freeze that turns every later change into formal change control.
No credit card. Opens as a real project on the Free plan.
What’s inside
All 14 tasks are below, across Concept, Feasibility, Development, Validation, and Launch. The four gate reviews are short tasks by design, because the work is in the evidence that arrives at them, not in the meeting itself.
14
Scheduled tasks
5
Phases
5
Milestones
~26
Weeks end to end
What makes a gate a gate
A gate review is not a progress update. It is a point where the organization decides to keep spending, stop spending, or send the work back, and the decision is recorded with who made it and on what evidence. The four gate tasks in this plan are all marked CRITICAL and all sit on the milestone timeline, because a gate that can slip quietly is not a control. Gate 2 in particular is the one that pays for the whole method: it confirms the design is buildable at the target cost before development spend is released, and skipping it is how tooling capital gets committed to a product that cannot be made economically.
The Concept phase does one thing most teams postpone, which is naming the target unit cost alongside the customer problem. A product defined only by its requirements will meet them at a cost nobody will pay. The requirements task also asks for the regulatory set to be identified at the start rather than discovered during validation, which is the single most expensive place to find them. Feasibility then spends its whole budget on de-risking the two or three unknowns that would invalidate the concept, and on supply chain, because a long-lead component with a lead time longer than the remaining schedule gates the launch date regardless of how well engineering goes.
Gate 3 is the design freeze, and it is the point the plan is built around. After it, changes go through formal change control with a price and a schedule impact rather than being absorbed by the engineering team. Onplana models that directly: the Change Control Board workflow gives a change request its own review panel and status trail, so a post-freeze change has the same paper trail as the gate that froze the design. Validation then tests against the requirements written in Concept, six months earlier, which is only possible because they were written down properly at the start.
The plan, phase by phase
Concept3 tasks
Define the opportunity and target cost
The customer problem, the market it sits in, and the unit cost the product has to hit to be worth building.
Draft the product requirements
Functional and non-functional requirements, with the regulatory ones identified now rather than at validation.
Hold Gate 1, concept review
Go, no-go, or recycle. Record the decision, the reviewers, and the conditions attached to a go.
Feasibility3 tasks
Run technical feasibility studies
De-risk the two or three unknowns that would invalidate the concept, before committing tooling spend.
Assess supply chain and lead times
Long-lead components identified and second-sourced where a single supplier would gate the launch date.
Hold Gate 2, feasibility review
Confirm the design is buildable at the target cost before development spend is released.
Development3 tasks
Build the engineering prototype
First integrated build. Expect it to fail somewhere useful; that is what it is for.
Design for manufacture and assembly
Rework the design for the production process, tolerances, and the assembly line that will actually build it.
Hold Gate 3, design freeze
Freeze the design. Every change after this point goes through formal change control, priced and scheduled.
Validation3 tasks
Run verification and validation testing
Test against the requirements written in concept, including the regulatory set. Record evidence as you go.
Complete the pilot production run
Build a small batch on production tooling to prove the process, not just the product.
Hold Gate 4, launch readiness
Evidence pack reviewed, open defects triaged, and the launch date confirmed or moved on the facts.
Launch2 tasks
Ramp production and release to market
Scale the line, release channel inventory, and hand support the documentation they need on day one.
Run the post-launch review
Actual cost against target, schedule against plan, and the gate decisions worth making differently.
Milestones
Five milestones, four of them gate decisions. They render as diamonds on the Gantt chart, which is usually the first time a program sees how little schedule sits between design freeze and launch readiness.
Gate 1, concept approved
Day 21 of the plan
Gate 2, feasibility passed
Day 53 of the plan
Gate 3, design freeze
Day 109 of the plan
Gate 4, launch readiness
Day 159 of the plan
Market launch
Day 177 of the plan
Frequently asked
Is this the same as Stage-Gate?
It is the same idea and the generic form of it. Stage-Gate is a specific trademarked methodology; phase-gate is the general practice of splitting development into phases separated by formal go, no-go, or recycle decisions. This template uses five phases and four gates, which is the most common shape, and the gate tasks are written so the decision and its conditions get recorded rather than assumed.
Does this only suit hardware?
It suits anything where a late change is expensive: hardware, medical devices, regulated software, industrial equipment, and physical consumer products. Teams shipping web software continuously will find the design freeze at Gate 3 works against them, and are better served by the Software Product Launch template, which assumes change is cheap.
How do I handle changes after the design freeze?
That is what Onplana's Change Control Board is for. A change request gets its own review panel, a status trail from draft through approved or rejected to implemented, and an audit record, so a post-freeze change carries the same evidence as the gate that froze the design. The CCB is an Enterprise feature; the template itself runs on every plan.
Six months is too long or too short for us. Does that matter?
No. The durations are a starting shape and every task can be resized once the project exists. What is worth preserving is the ratio, with feasibility given real time rather than being compressed into a formality. Programs that overrun usually did so because feasibility was rushed and its unknowns resurfaced after the design freeze, which the risk register in this template calls out explicitly.
Can the gates require formal approval from named reviewers?
Yes, at the Enterprise tier. Onplana's governance pipeline supports designated reviewer panels per gate with quorum logic, where any single rejection rejects and all approvals advance. The template gives you the gate structure on any plan; the formal approval machinery around it is what the governance feature adds.
Start with the plan already built
Open the Phase-Gate Product Development template free and your phases, tasks, and milestones are scheduled before the kickoff meeting. No credit card, no time limit.