Deliverables, Activities, and Gate Documents in Process Models Overview

Process Designers can include deliverables, activities, and gate documents within stages and gates within a process model to ensure that they are available for completion in each project that follows the model. Project team members complete these documents or physical deliverables, and executives making process decisions review them to determine if a project continues to move forward.

Deliverables, activities, and gate documents exist both as an element of the process and as part of the project. Process Designers are concerned with adding them to a process model.

• Deliverable - A deliverable is a document or other item that is produced for a gate meeting. Its purpose is to help gatekeepers decide whether to continue or kill a project. Deliverables can be physical items such as a prototype; however, they are represented in Accolade as documents. Within the process model, a deliverable can be referenced to its template in the Template Library, and include pre-defined workflows and grids to capture information within a project. If a Process Designer adds a new deliverable to the model after the project has started, the deliverable is included to the project.
• Activity - An activity is anything that helps to complete, or is part of, a deliverable. For example, the completion of a document that contains research for a deliverable, a sub-document to the deliverable itself that is presented at a gate meeting, or one or a series of tasks that support the completion of the deliverable. Process Designers can add activities to deliverables within a process model to ensure they are available to all projects that use that model. An activity defined in the process model can be associated with a template, and its activity document may be similar in function to a deliverable.

Process Managers can also create activities within a project while the project is in process. An activity created in the project cannot be associated with a template, but it can include document versions uploaded to Accolade. An activity created in the project cannot have an online document because online forms require templates.

• Gate Documents - A gate document is a project document that is stored as part of a specific gate. Gate documents contain information related to the gate, for example meeting notes and scorecards. Gate documents, like deliverables, exist as an element of the process in the process model, and as a file that a gate owner completes for a gate meeting.

See the following to get started:

• Deliverable, Activity, and Gate Document Best Practices
• Adding Deliverables and Activities to Process Model Stages
• Adding Gate Documents to Process Model Gates