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Exit Criteria: the Gate Review

Problem Phase is not complete when the team feels it understands the problem. It's complete when simultaneous and verifiable conditions are met:

Gate 1 → 2: Passage conditions
  • ✅ The Problem Statement has been validated directly with at least two of the clients or users interviewed and they recognize it as a faithful description of their reality.
  • ✅ The success criteria has been validated with the decision owner and they recognize it as the definition of "solved."
  • ✅ Documented constraints have been verified with the actors who impose them (IT for technical constraints, legal for regulatory, finance for budgetary).
  • ✅ There is explicit agreement within the team on the Problem Statement's formulation. Not majority. Not silence interpreted as agreement. Real agreement.
  • ✅ The Actor Map, Interview Guide, Synthesis Board, and Problem Statement are documented and accessible.
  • ✅ Starting hypotheses have been explicitly confirmed or refuted.
  • ❌ Do not advance if the Problem Statement hasn't been externally validated, even if the team is convinced it's correct.
  • ❌ Do not advance if there are relevant disagreements within the team that haven't been resolved.
  • ❌ Do not advance if the success criteria isn't defined or if different stakeholders have incompatible criteria that haven't been resolved.

These Exit Criteria exist to protect the team from itself. The pressure to move forward is real. Deadlines are real. The temptation to accept a Problem Statement without externally validating it is enormous. But every shortcut here is paid for many times over in subsequent phases.

After the gate: transition to Phase 2​

When the team completes the Gate Review, something important happens: the team earns the right to think about solutions.

This concept — earning the right to build — is central to the methodology. It's not a matter of permission or bureaucracy. It's a matter of quality. A team that has done rigorous discovery arrives at the solution phase with an understanding that allows them to evaluate solutions with judgment. A team that skipped discovery arrives with opinions, not judgment. And opinions, when not backed by data, produce endless discussions.

The Problem Statement travels to Phase 2 (Solution Phase) accompanied by the Actor Map, the Synthesis Board, and the Interview Guide. These four artifacts together contain:

  • The defined problem — what needs to be solved and for whom.
  • The people surrounding it — who can block, boost, or be impacted by the solution.
  • The evidence that supports it — the raw data and patterns from which the problem definition was distilled.
  • The method by which it was discovered — allowing anyone to trace the reasoning back to the source.

There's one element that deserves special attention in this transition: the success criteria defined in the Problem Statement becomes the evaluation criteria for the solution in Phase 2. It's not the solution that defines its own success. It's the problem that defines it. This distinction prevents one of the most costly errors: building something that works perfectly by its own metrics but doesn't solve what it was supposed to solve.