ShopWave, a mid-market ecommerce platform, is replacing its legacy checkout service with a new modular checkout stack to support faster feature delivery and reduce payment failures. You are the program manager leading execution across engineering, product, QA, and go-to-market. The team uses Agile today, but delivery has been inconsistent: sprint commitments are missed, dependencies are discovered late, and stakeholders want more predictable launch planning.
The project team includes 10 engineers, 2 QA engineers, 1 designer, 1 product manager, and you. Leadership wants the first production launch in 14 weeks because the current checkout failure rate is affecting holiday revenue forecasts. The migration matters because checkout drives 38% of company revenue and the legacy system takes 3 weeks to release even small changes.
The VP of Product wants visible customer-facing improvements by the end of the quarter. The Engineering Director wants the team to maintain sustainable Agile practices and avoid cutting core reliability work. Sales is pushing for a promotional launch date tied to a major merchant conference. Customer Support wants better internal tooling before rollout because they handle payment issue escalations.