Quality gates are formal checkpoints used in project management to assess whether a project is ready to progress from one stage to the next based on predefined criteria. They help project managers control quality and its integration with scope and schedule. Quality gates consist of completion criteria and standards that must be met at key points in a project's lifecycle, such as planning, doing, checking, and acting. In agile projects, quality gates are replaced by sprint cycles with definition of done checklists and acceptance criteria to incrementally inspect and refine the product. While quality gates impose constraints, agile methods use variable schedules, budgets and scopes with sprints and retrospectives to continuously improve the product.

1. Quality Gates
Why they are important to manage projects?

2. Introduction
As a Project Manager you
must plan and control scope,
schedule, cost and quality but
most of the managers
frequently have difficulty in
planning and controlling
quality and its integration with
scope an schedule.
Quality affects other dimensions of project performance.
Quality
Schedule Scope
Budget

3. What is a QG?
A formal checkpoint consisting of a set of predesigned
completion criteria and sufficiency standards that a
project must meet in order to proceed from one stage of
its life cycle to the next.
1. Plan
2. Do
3. Check
4. Act

4. How does it look like?
Process starting
point
Quality
Gate
Quality
Gate
Quality
Gate
Process finishing
point
Process segment Process segment Process segment Process segment
Provide support
Move forward with:
- Additional resources
- Additional Budget
- Additional manpower
- …
Go Go
Not Go
Go
Not Go
Correct the outputs
Before moving on
Not Go
Decisions

5. Identifying quality criteria
Quality Gates enables project managers to ground their projects in reality
during the execution phases of projects and provide clear, unambiguous
warnings that the project is not as far along as stakeholders may think.
Quality Gates act as “forcing functions”
that protect projects by ensuring that
project team members finish first things
first.

6. As we know…
Some of the major benefits of QG include:
Helps to take a quick decisions
Provides product success with the desired quality
Prevents the poor outcome and redirects to corrective actions
Increase the participation and motivation of team members towards the project goal
Reduces the communication barriers or unnecessary confusions
Takes complete control of quality, cost and time

7. Yea but,
what about
Agile?

8. How do we do it?
In Agile projects we
have the opportunity to
inspect and adapt the
product as it emerges,
and iteratively refine
everyone’s
understanding of it.

9. Constrains
Schedule
Schedule
Budget
Budget
Scope
Scope
Traditional
Agile
Immovable
Variable

10. Agile process

12. Sprint Cycle vs QG Model

13. DoD for a sprint
Definition of done
DoD is a checklist of valuable activities required to produce software.

14. Acceptance criteria for a sprint
Acceptance criteria

15. Improving the DoD
After Sprint execution, the team holds a Sprint Review Meeting to
demonstrate a working product increment to the PO and everyone else who
is interested.
After the demonstration, the PO reviews the commitments made at the
Sprint Planning Meeting and declares which items he now considers done.
Feedback from Retrospective Meetings should also help to improve the
definition of done.

16. How to define the DoD?
Preparing a single definition of done that suits every situation is impossible.
Each team should collaborate and come up with the definition that suits its
unique environment.
The Definition of Done and
Acceptance criteria are constructed
of Brainstorming Session

17. Not only the result is important
QG helps to decreased
project risk through
phase-by-phase
checklists

18. Thanks for
coming …
I hope you
learned
something
today!