HomePlatformWorkflows
Platform · Workflows

Your development process, running alongside your team.

Narratize workflows turn your development methodology into a living system. Every stage knows what to ask for, what to produce, which templates and agents to activate, and when your team is ready to advance.

WORKFLOW · ACTIVERUNNING01DISCOVERYG102SCOPINGG203BUS. CASEACTIVEG304DEVELOPSTAGE 03 · BUSINESS CASE · WHAT IT CARRIESINPUTS• Market data• Supplier quotes• Equipment costs• Approved PRDsTEMPLATES• ROI Projections• Mfg Cost Analysis• Capital Request• Supply ChainAGENTS• Size of Prize• Market Intelligence• Red Team• Gap AssessmentGATE• Financial return• Six-criteria scoring• Resource commit• Leadership sign-offStage advancing82%Gate 3 context assembled · Ready for leadership review→ Every stage carries: inputs, templates, agents, and a gate→ Your team sees exactly what's needed and when they're ready to advance
What a Workflow Does

A workflow in Narratize is the system your process becomes.

In most organizations, the development process lives in a wiki, a slide deck, and in the heads of the people who've run it before. Narratize turns it into a system that actively runs alongside your team — carrying the work, activating the right resources, and showing exactly when a stage is ready to advance.

What It Is

Your process, encoded.

A workflow defines the stages your product moves through, the gates it passes, and what every stage needs to produce. Your methodology stops being a reference document and becomes a structure your product actually runs on.

What It Does

Activates the right resources for every stage.

Every stage knows which templates to surface, which AI agents to run, which hub knowledge to draw on, and which cross-functional contributors to involve — so your team arrives at the work with everything it needs.

What It Signals

Shows when the work is ready to advance.

Because the workflow knows what “done” looks like at every stage, your team sees readiness in real time. Gate reviews arrive with complete context. Leadership gets a live view of where every program truly stands.

What Teams Experience

Workflows change how every stage of the work feels.

The real value of a Narratize workflow isn't in the diagram — it's in the moments where your team meets the work. Across every role, every stage, the experience shifts from assembling context to acting on it.

Starting a New Stage

Your team arrives with context already in place.

A new stage opens and the right templates are already surfaced, the right knowledge is already linked, and the right agents are ready to run. Nobody starts by searching through Slack, chasing old decks, or trying to remember what the last team did. The work begins at the work.

Moving Between Functions

Handoffs carry the reasoning forward.

When R&D hands off to process engineering, or engineering hands off to regulatory, the workflow carries the “why” alongside the “what.” Decisions, trade-offs, and sensitivities travel with the artifact. Cross-functional boundaries stop being where momentum goes to die.

Preparing for a Gate

Gate reviews arrive already assembled.

Because the workflow has been carrying the evidence stage by stage, gate reviews open with the context already complete. The week before a review stops being archaeology. The review itself becomes what it was designed to be — a strategic conversation about whether to advance.

Running a Portfolio

Leadership sees where every program truly stands.

Because every active product runs on a workflow, leadership gets a live view across the full portfolio. Which programs are healthy. Which need attention. Which gates are approaching. Which patterns are emerging across programs.

The Shared Rhythm

Every stage follows the same rhythm. Inputs, outputs, a gate.

No matter which workflow your team runs, every stage operates the same way. Clear inputs come in. Structured outputs come out. A gate decides what happens next. The rhythm is what makes the whole system legible to every team that uses it.

Inputs
What the stage needs
Prior-stage outputs, hub knowledge, templates, and specific evidence the current stage depends on — surfaced before the work begins.
The Stage
Where cross-functional teams do the work
Templates, agents, and structured guidance engineered for the phase — so teams spend time on the work itself, not on the scaffolding.
Outputs
Structured deliverables, source-traceable
Every output grounded in the hub's verified knowledge. Every claim traces back to its source. Every decision carries its reasoning.
Gate Decision
Advance, hold, or pivot
Gate reviews arrive with full context already assembled. Reviews become strategic conversations instead of evidence hunts.
Inside a Stage · Stage 03 · Business Case

Every stage carries everything your team needs to run it.

Inputs

  • Approved PRDs from Stage 02
  • Market data from hub
  • Supplier quotes
  • Equipment cost estimates
  • Customer validation research

Templates

  • ROI Projections
  • Manufacturing Cost Analysis
  • Capital Investment Request
  • Supply Chain Assessment
  • Business Case Statement

Agents

  • Size of Prize
  • Market Intelligence
  • Red Team Analysis
  • Gap Assessment
  • Alignment Checker

Gate 3 Criteria

  • Financial return validated
  • Six-criteria scoring complete
  • Resource commitment approved
  • Leadership sign-off ready
Built for How Your Industry Already Works

Whatever methodology your team runs, Narratize already knows it.

Classic stage-gate. FDA design controls. APQP. Aerospace TRL-gated. Agile stage-gate hybrid. Build-measure-learn. Narratize ships with thirteen workflows mapped to the methodologies innovation teams actually use — and each one is ready to run, ready to customize, ready to make yours.

Stage-Gate Family · Cooper
Default · Ships Ready to Run

Cooper's Stage-Gate

Classic stage-gate for physical product development.

The industry-standard stage-gate process Narratize ships with by default. Six stages, five gates, with inputs, outputs, templates, and agents mapped for every phase.

6 stages · 5 gates
Agile Hybrid

Cooper's Agile Stage-Gate

Sprint-based execution inside a stage-gate structure.

Combines stage-gate rigor with agile iteration — sprint-based scoping, build, and validation cycles within each stage.

6 stages · sprint-based
Ecosystem

Cooper's Innovation Ecosystem

Portfolio-wide stage-gate with cross-program intelligence.

Extends stage-gate across your full portfolio — connecting adjacent programs, surfacing transferable learnings, and aligning investment decisions.

Multi-program · portfolio view
Full Cycle

Cooper's Ideation-to-Launch

End-to-end stage-gate, from first idea to post-launch review.

The complete cycle — extends classic stage-gate with upstream ideation and downstream post-launch review phases.

8 stages · full lifecycle
Regulated Industries · Design Controls
Medical Devices

FDA Design Controls

21 CFR 820.30 design control process for medical devices.

Full FDA design controls workflow — from design planning through validation, transfer, and change control. Every decision captured for the Design History File.

DHF-ready
Pharma

Pharma Drug Development

Discovery through commercial launch, FDA pathway aligned.

End-to-end pharmaceutical development aligned to FDA phases — Discovery, Preclinical, Phase I–III Clinical, NDA/BLA Submission, Post-Market Surveillance.

FDA-pathway aligned
Automotive

Automotive APQP

Advanced Product Quality Planning for OEM and tier suppliers.

The five-phase APQP workflow — Plan, Design, Process Design, Product Validation, and Production Launch — with PPAP outputs fully captured.

APQP + PPAP ready
Aerospace

Aerospace TRL-Gated

Technology Readiness Level progression for aerospace and defense.

TRL-gated development from research (TRL 1–3) through prototype (TRL 4–6) to operational systems (TRL 7–9), DO-178C and AS9100 captured.

TRL 1–9 · certification-ready
Industry-Specific · Sector Workflows
Consumer Electronics

Consumer Electronics Stage-Gate

Hardware-software-firmware coordinated development.

Stage-gate tailored for consumer electronics — coordinated hardware, firmware, and software tracks, with certification and supply chain phases mapped in.

HW + FW + SW coordinated
Energy

Energy Innovation Stage-Gate

Long-cycle development for energy storage, generation, and grid.

Tuned for the longer timelines of energy innovation — with TRL gates, pilot deployment, and grid certification phases mapped through commercial scale.

Long-cycle · TRL + pilot
Aerospace Hardware

Scaled Agile for Hardware

SAFe-aligned hardware development across program increments.

Scaled Agile Framework tuned for hardware programs — PI planning, ART coordination, and system demos mapped to physical product development cadence.

SAFe · PI-aligned
Agile & Lean · Iterative Approaches
Lean Startup

Build-Measure-Learn (Lean)

Lean Startup cycles for new-to-market and venture innovation.

Lean Startup's build-measure-learn loop — hypothesis, experiment, validate, pivot or persevere — mapped for early-stage and disruptive innovation programs.

Iterative · hypothesis-driven
Quality Framework

ISO 9001 Quality Framework

ISO 9001:2015 design and development clause-aligned.

Workflow aligned to ISO 9001:2015 design and development clauses — planning, input, control, verification, validation, and design changes all captured.

ISO 9001:2015 aligned
For Admins

Admins shape the workflow. Every team runs on it.

Workflow administrators choose the methodology, configure the stages, define inputs and outputs, and assign the people and templates that bring each stage to life. Once set up, the workflow guides every product hub running on it — with the consistency leadership needs and the flexibility teams use.

Choose the methodology

Create and configure workflows.

Start from one of the thirteen workflows Narratize ships with, or design a custom workflow for your organization's specific methodology. Every workflow is fully configurable to match how your business actually develops products.

Map the stage rhythm

Define inputs and outputs.

Specify what each stage needs to begin, what it produces, and which artifacts pass through every gate. The workflow becomes a contract between stages — clear about what's required, what's produced, and what's ready.

Assign roles

Assign the right people.

Map the cross-functional roles for each stage — R&D, engineering, regulatory, marketing, commercial — and the workflow surfaces the right contributors at the right moment without manual coordination.

Set the gates

Build in approval workflows.

Configure who approves at each gate, what criteria must be met, and what evidence must be assembled. Gate reviews stop being status meetings and start being structured decisions on a known set of criteria.

Activate the workflow

Assign workflows to product hubs.

Once configured, the workflow gets assigned to one or many Product Knowledge Hubs. Every product running on that workflow inherits the same stages, gates, templates, and agents — with full flexibility per product.

Update without disruption

Maintain and evolve in place.

When your methodology evolves — new templates, refined gate criteria, additional agents — update the workflow once and every active product running on it benefits. Improvements compound across the portfolio.

Built for Your Methodology

Your methodology stays intact. Narratize adapts to it.

Whether your organization runs a single methodology across every program or multiple workflows for different product types, Narratize meets you where you already are. Your process keeps its name, its stages, and its terminology. The platform adapts to the methodology your team has already built credibility around.

See It Running

See your process running alongside your team.

30 minutes. Bring your current development methodology — stage-gate, agile hybrid, FDA design controls, or your own — and watch what it looks like as a Narratize workflow. Leave with a concrete picture of how your process becomes a system that runs.

Schedule a Demo →
No commitment · Bring your methodology · Live walkthrough