In business or project management jargon, “pain gate” is non-standard. However, in some scaled Agile frameworks (SAFe), a “gated process” might refer to stage gates in a waterfall hybrid. More likely, “pain gate” here is either:
In the context of Japanese work culture, a "pain gate" refers to the friction points encountered when moving away from a traditional waterfall model toward agile frameworks like Scrum. Scrum Pain Points japanese bdsm ddsc013 scrum pain gate google work
Toyota’s Andon cord (the rope pull in a Lean manufacturing plant) is the grandfather of the Scrum pain gate. When a worker on a Toyota line sees pain (a defect), they pull the cord. The entire line stops. That is a In business or project management jargon, “pain gate”