01.6
Sanction and the authority to stop
Who is entitled to stop this, and have they ever been given information that would let them?
What goes wrong without it
Most capital governance is well equipped to approve and poorly equipped to halt. Stage gates that cannot realistically return a negative answer are reporting events wearing the clothes of a control. The test of a gate is not whether it exists but whether anything has ever failed one.
What to examine
- Ask how many gates have been failed, deferred with conditions, or passed with conditions never subsequently closed. The last category is the most informative.
- Check whether the body approving the gate receives the estimate range or the estimate point.
- Establish whether the person chairing the gate carries delivery accountability. Where they do, note that the control and the thing being controlled share an owner.
- Confirm the gate criteria were set before the submission was prepared.
Required by
- ISO 21502:2020, Clause 6, on the project governance framework and managing the delivery of a project.
- PMBOK Guide, Eighth Edition, November 2025, governance performance domain.
- Global Internal Audit Standards, Institute of Internal Auditors, effective 9 January 2025, on governance of the internal audit function and the role of the board.
Read the sources
- ISO 21502:2020, guidance on project management2020; read 2026-09-26.The link carries the abstract and publication details, not the guidance text.
- Global Internal Audit Standards, Institute of Internal Auditors2024 Global Internal Audit Standards; read 2026-08-20.
In the asset lifecycle method
The steps of the two methods that this domain examines.