Project Background

At NovaCart, a mid-market e-commerce platform, the executive team has noticed a sharp drop in key growth metrics two weeks before QBR. Weekly new seller sign-ups are down 18%, buyer conversion is down 9%, and 30-day retention for newly onboarded sellers is down 6 points versus plan. You are the program manager coordinating Product, Analytics, Marketing, and Sales to prepare the executive readout and recovery plan.

Key Stakeholders

The CEO wants a clear explanation and a credible recovery path before the board pre-read goes out in 10 days. The CFO is concerned about missing quarterly revenue targets, while the CMO believes paid acquisition cuts are the main driver and wants budget restored immediately. The Head of Product suspects a recent onboarding release hurt activation and wants time to validate before making public commitments.

Constraints

You have 10 calendar days to prepare the executive communication and align on next steps. The working team includes 1 PM, 2 analysts, 3 engineering leads, and 2 marketing managers. Only $120K in uncommitted quarterly budget remains, and engineering can support at most 2 mitigation workstreams this month because a payments migration already consumes 40% of backend capacity.

Complications

1. The metrics drop started the same week as both a pricing page redesign and a reduction in paid acquisition spend, making root cause unclear.
2. Sales has already told several enterprise prospects that Q3 growth is on track, creating pressure to avoid alarming leadership.
3. One executive prefers a concise one-page update, while others expect a detailed diagnosis with recommendations.

Your Task

1. Outline how you would communicate the metric decline to the executive team.
2. Propose a decision-ready recovery plan with trade-offs across Product, Marketing, and Engineering.
3. Define what data you would include, what you would defer, and how you would handle uncertainty.
4. Identify stakeholder alignment risks and how you would manage them before the exec review.
5. Recommend success criteria and follow-up cadence for the next 30 days.