Plan approval and development commit: gate review pack

1. Purpose of the gate

Plan approval is the largest commitment the business makes before silicon exists. Up to this point the money spent is on understanding the product; from here, it is on building it. The product lifecycle sets six criteria: product requirements agreed and traceable to the market requirements, make, buy or partner decisions recorded with their reasons, cost, price and schedule targets agreed, engineering resources and budget committed, quality and reliability targets set for the intended markets, and the top risks tracked.

The gate also changes how the product is managed. At plan approval the product requirements are baselined and the integrated schedule across every engineering lifecycle and business function is baselined with them. From this point, changes to requirements go through change control with their cost and schedule impact stated, and the risk register becomes a living document reviewed at every later gate.

Several engineering gates meet here. The SoC lifecycle's product plan agreed is the same decision. A frozen SoC specification is the strongest evidence that the product requirements can be met at the agreed cost and schedule, so many organisations hold specification freeze just before or alongside this gate. The IP lifecycle's plan approval brings the make or buy view for each block, and the FPGA lifecycle's device selection brings the chosen device, its availability and its own lifecycle into the cost, supply and end-of-life plans.