How to setup a stage-gate (project management) flow

[Marc]

Hello Atlassian community,

I'm new to the Jira tooling, and I'm looking for the best way to setup a project management stage-gate process. The objectives are:

• to run 5-10 projects in a period of ~6 months through a process (after which the next wave of 5-10 projects will start)
• to show where in the process the project currently are, enabling to steer them in the right direction and prepare them for the next stage gate
• to have a monthly moment where projects can report and get approval to go the next stage
• to retain sufficient flexibility in the timings, as project likely deviate from the standard timings and some may be finished faster or later than the 6 months

From what I understood the Jira Software functionality is most flexible, and could potentially serve as a good tool to establish this. Currently I tried to structure it as follows, but that not fully worked out:

• Workflow follows the process steps: backlog>stage 1>stage 2>stage 3>done
• Epics are the waves
• Stories are the projects
• New issue type named "stages" (that the projects follow).

Ideally this would enable me to (see graphics below):

• Using the board to move projects through the stages (filtering for only stories)
• Using the road-map to visually see where the projects are currently at
• Using releases to show the monthly moments where projects can report

A few problems that I'm running into:

• I cannot see the bars for the stories and stages in the roadmap
• I have not managed to link the stories with the stages (ideally that if I shift a story on the board to a next stage, that the "stage" automatically shifts along.

Keen to get any suggestions on how to best/alternatively structure this.

Thanks

Marc

[Maarten]

I bumped into a similar challenge in several assignments.

I created a blog on my website:
https://www.ithaki.support/2025/09/08/how-to-manage-a-stage-gate-project-in-jira/

I would appreciate your feedback

Maarten

[Nik_CPUT]

Hi Marc,

Have you managed to structure the stage-gate process flow? I'm also interested adapting our stage gate development process to the Jira platform.

Any advice would be super helpful.

Best,

Nikki