Gateways in PM3 provide key control points in the life-cycle to formally review the Programme or Project's on-going viability. At each Gateway (e.g. Initiation Approval Gateway, Launch Approval Gateway) the Project Manager defines the Project's RAG level of compliance with checklist questions specific to that Gateway and submits the results for governance review.
Gateway Criteria
Gateway Criteria are criteria/questions that, if satisfied, will allow a Plan to pass through a Gateway as part of programme/project governance.
NB: All Plans, at the time of their creation, store internally the Gateways and Gateway Assessment Criteria that are set at that time. As a result of this, when Gateway Assessment Criteria are changed by Administrators all Plans created prior to that moment may fall out of line with the new criteria.
Gateway Milestone
A Gateway Milestone in a Milestone Plan is a special Milestone through which your Plan must pass. Gateways
Milestones cannot be deleted. Depending upon Administrator settings you may or may not be able to Close Gateway Milestones. Gateway Milestones can only be closed if the corresponding Gateway in Gateway Page of the Plan has been set to ‘passed’ by Gateway Reviewers.
NB: The Renumber icon will have no effect on the codes of Gateway Milestones.
Gateways Set
A Gateway Set is a set/subset of the Full Set of Gateways. Depending upon Administrator settings you may or may not be able to select the set of Gateways through which your Plan must pass.
By default the Gateway Set is set as the Default Set (as specified by Administrators). If Gateway Set is enabled, you can select from the available Sets. Selecting a particular Set will replace the current Gateway Milestone set with the selected Set (which may be more than or fewer than the current Set) but will not replace any Closed Gateway Milestones (so that history is not lost, even though those Passed Gateway Milestones are no longer relevant). Therefore if the replacing Set is a subset of the current Set open Gateway Milestones no longer relevant will disappear from the Milestone Plan; if the replacing Set is a superset of the current Set the new undated Gateway Milestones will be added (but existing Gateway
Milestones will be unaltered)
Gateway Status as alternative option to Workflow Status on Plan>Details
We now offer an alternative to Workflow Status in the top right of Plan Details; the Gateway (Stage Gate) Status. This is a calculated view, driven entirely by the dates on the plan’s Gateway Milestones. It can be accessed from the Plan Details page, by clicking the Show Gateway Status button above the Workflow Status section:
We then see the new view:
The way this view works is it will draw an arrow through your plan’s gateways, stopping prior to the first incomplete gateway milestone. In the example plan above, the PROJECT IDEA gateway has been completed, so we are past that. However we are not yet past the BUDGETED IDEA gateway milestone – as such, the Gateway Status is “BUDGETED IDEA”, its colour is that of the Overall Delivery Status of the plan unless that is White, in which case the Gateway Status RAG takes the colour of the associated Gateway milestone.
If we were to complete the BUDGETED IDEA milestone, our gateway status would advance to INITIATION APPROVAL:
The Gateway related fields are also available on the Home > Projects, Programmes, and BCPs pages and in the GetPlans DataMart function:
- GatewaySetName
- PreviousGatewayMilestoneID
- PreviousGatewayMilestoneName
- CurrentGatewayMilestoneID
- CurrentGatewayMilestoneName
Gateways Page
Gateways page under the Governance Tab allows you to define your RAG level of compliance or extent of completion of task (e.g. 80%+ complete=Green) with various Assessment Criteria that must be satisfied in order to pass a particular Gateway. The relevant Gateway can be selected from the Gateway dropdown field. For each criterion you may add attachments by clicking the paperclip icon and/or add textual information or http or web site links in the Evidence field. Comments can optionally be added in the ‘Comments/conditions/reasons’ field; note that these will be seen by the Gateway Reviewer.
Once you are satisfied that your gateway is ready for review, open the gateway that you want reviewed and click the
Send for Review icon. This will email a facsimile of this page (with all Evidence and links attached) to the Gateways Reviewer who will in turn send a response that will be seen in the Review Status field (and will result in an email request being sent to the Plan Owner). If the reviewer permits the programme/project to pass the Gateway, the corresponding Gateway Milestone in the Milestone Plan page can be closed.
Multiple reviewers can also be specified by typing all the emails that the gateway is to be sent out to in a comma separated list in the ‘Approvers’ email field, the first user to make a decision on the approval will then lock the gateway so it cannot be approved/denied multiple times.
Gateways Workstream
A Gateways Workstream in a Milestone Plan is a special Workstream including Gateways through which your Plan must pass. The Gateways Workstream cannot be opened, changed or deleted.
Note that the Renumber icon will have no effect on the codes of Gateway Milestones.
1Goal Directed Project Management®
1GDPM® (Goal Directed Project Management)1 is a simple, powerful, pragmatic approach to gaining consensus from all stakeholders on the objectives of a BCP/Programme/Project and the key 'work packets' that must be performed to achieve those objectives. Each 'work packet' ends with a milestone. Business, people and technical aspects are all represented in the Milestone Plan.
This approach has proven beneficial to a large number of organisations, in a wide variety of industries. It complements, but does not replace, the detailed Activity Plans that many Project Managers are used to producing.
It provides a high-level, single-page view of a Plan’s key Milestones, and achievement of those Milestones, which is supported by the more detailed plans. The GDPM®-based planning approach is used to plan both project delivery Milestones and subsequent value realization Milestones (after the Plan has gone Live).
PM3 supports some aspects of GDPM but not all.
1GDPM® was developed by Erling S Andersen, Kristoffer V Grude and Tor Haug.
It is a very readable and excellent book.