Gates are a powerful process design tool that when used properly, can effectively regulate the release of work within your process, and help your team to get more done.
By implementing gates, you can significantly boost productivity, minimize the number of tasks left unfinished, and foster a positive culture of completion and accomplishment within your team.
Some processes only require one gate, while others have more complicated flow structures that may benefit from multiple gates throughout the process. Gates add value in different ways depending on their location and how they are used.
Using a gate at the start of a process can help by restraining work from entering the system when the inputs are not yet ready or if there is already too much active work. Avoiding stops and starts of work and limiting multi-tasking are two very important strategies for efficiency gains.
Gates located within the workflow allow for "rendezvous" points for all parties on a project team to gather and synchronize their work efforts before proceeding into another phase of work, proceeding on to deeper more involved and expensive work, or reliably handing work off to another team.
Gates at the end of a process allow for quality assurance, scope review, and careful hand-offs of work. This gate becomes less important when workflow systems are designed in ways that build-in quality upstream in the process.
To enhance your team's efficiency and output, integrating gates in a strategic way into your process design is the way to go. Then your next challenge will be developing the gatekeepers!