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Jeff Nolan

Growth engineering · 2026-11-10 · 1 min read

No artifact, no handoff: the five-gate campaign lifecycle

One owner, one artifact, one gate per stage.

Isometric schematic of five platforms in a row, joined by gates, with an amber mark on the last platform.

Campaigns take months, and most of that time is handoffs. The fix is a five-stage lifecycle: Strategic Brief, Adaptation, Build and Produce, Launch and Execute, Report and Learn. Each stage has one owner, one required handoff artifact and one gate.

yaml
stage: strategic-brief
owner: "{{TODO: role}}"
artifact: brief.json
gate:
  required: [audience, objective, offer, messaging_tier, success_metric]
  on_fail: return_to_owner

No artifact, no handoff. In software, the artifact is structured data and the gate is a check.

Proof of work · artifacts
Proof claims
28%
28% more pipeline per program dollar, year over year (2026 year to date vs 2025; from 20:1 to 28:1).2026 year to date vs 2025Source

Sources

  1. Jeff Nolan, LinkedIn