Improving the Effectiveness of Fuzzy Front End Management: Expanding Stage-Gate Methodologies through Agile

Abstract

More now than ever before, product development has become more challenging and complex with all the globalization around business today. Understanding the requirements of unfamiliar markets can be very challenging for organizations trying to speed-up their innovations. Also with the advent of globalization there is pressure on everyone to perform better and roll out new products in the market. The fuzzy front end process is very dynamic and unstructured process. By taking advantage of the key characteristics of Agile and Stage-Gate model, an Integrated Agile- Stage- Gate Hybrid model was developed which could help in improving the effectiveness of the fuzzy front end process. The goal of this research is to improve the effectiveness of Fuzzy Front End innovation process by expanding Stage-Gate methodologies through Agile. In order to do this, literature review was done to understand and review various Stage-Gate approaches, focusing on the problems of the Stage-Gate model and solutions provided by the succeeding frameworks. The key contribution of the research is an assessment of different Stage- Gate models which has been developed over the years focusing on their problems and the solutions given by Agile to resolve these problems. Recommendations are made in the end accordingly.