Is it a Product Operating Model? Or is it Stage-gates?

Navigating the opportunity-rich environment of the AI age, when your company is considering dozens of “finding AI gold” initiatives, requires discipline and product-orientation.

I’m working with a PMO leader to develop a product-oriented portfolio management approach in an organization with deep roots in pharma, chemistry, and hardware development.

Meaning an ongoing clash between stage gates and agility/product-orientation.

I’m recalling an exercise we included in the Scrum.org Professional Scrum w/ Kanban. The “Is it Waterfall? Is it Kanban?” exercise is one of my favorites because it explores the folly of extreme views on this.

Being product-oriented and iterative doesn’t preclude the use of stage gates.

It precludes big-batch stage gates that lock in too much up front.

It actually benefits from the right sort of stage gates, those that focus on flushing out risks/leap-of-faith assumptions.

That enables, and even forces, explicit choice between discovery (tracer bullets) and delivery (cannon balls) depending on the risk profile.

Curious: how are you thinking about the role and evolution of stage gates in the AI age?