Delivering a project within deadlines, on a balanced budget and with skill will always be a challenge for any project manager. Managers regard a toll gate or stage gate approach as a logical way to embark on a project. A toll gate approach gives certain pre-defined, predetermined check points right through the project’s lifecycle and an estimate of realistic progress as of now. Tollgate planning is also recognized as Phasegate planning. It is used to lay constraints and check high project risk. Tollgate planning basically seperates the tasks into divisions or phases. Tollgate reviews are a conceptually simple, yet extremely powerful tool for creating successful projects. To summarize Patrick Gray says- Like their real world analogue, where a driver must pay a fee before he or she can continue driving on a particular road, a tollgate review requires that a project meet a pre-defined set of criteria, a fee of sorts, before it can continue to its next logical phase.”
N2 services software development lifecycle utilizes Tollgate Methodology
Key steps:
- Choose where the tollgates should be set in the project plan
- Interpret neutral, quantifiable criteria for each tollgate
- Hold a review meeting as each tollgate is reached
Merits of this approach:
- Exceptional method of managing risk:, reconsider whether project can be forged ahead, define whether all yardsticks has been met, approve the project inception.
- Establishes that the project plan is feasible – break the plan into controllable portions
- Enables better planning – checks all salient review points where higher risk is contemplated
Positioning tollgates
There are primarily two ways to determine where to put tollgates:
- By project phases
- By key project milestones e.g. software design completed