Phase gate reviews are the heartbeat of mission engineering programs. SRR, PDR, CDR, TRR. Each one requires a deliverable package that shows requirements status, budget margins, risk posture, and gate readiness across every subsystem.
On most programs, assembling this package is a manual process. Pull the requirements status from DOORS or a spreadsheet. Copy the mass budget from one Excel file and the power budget from another. Screenshot the risk matrix. Paste everything into PowerPoint. Cross-reference the numbers to make sure nothing contradicts. Format it to match the template your review board expects.
Two engineers. Two weeks. Every review cycle. That is 160 engineer-hours per review, four to eight times per year. For a team billing at $85/hour fully loaded, that is $13,600 to $27,200 per year in labor just to assemble the review package. Not to do the engineering work the review is supposed to evaluate.
The fix is not a better PowerPoint template. It is having all the data in one place so the deliverable can be generated, not assembled. When requirements, budgets, risks, and phase gates live in the same system, the review package is a one-click export. The numbers are current because they come from the live data. The trace is complete because the system maintains it.