A stage-gate typically includes some must-meet criteria/bench-marks that are required for a project to proceed to the next stage.

1. At what stage in the project life-cycle should these criteria be agreed on?
2. Many projects have to deal with uncertainty where a clear idea of what criteria are attainable may not emerge till much later into the project. Given this uncertainty, should these criteria/bench-marks be up for renegotiation after it has been fixed once?