Project Background
At HubSpot, the growth analytics team has completed a complex pricing and packaging analysis for a new AI-powered email assistant. The analysis combines customer segmentation, willingness-to-pay survey results, usage forecasts, and engineering cost estimates, and leadership wants a launch recommendation within 4 weeks so the product can be included in the next quarterly release.
You are the program manager coordinating a cross-functional team of 10 people: 3 analysts, 1 product manager, 4 engineers, 1 marketing lead, and 1 finance partner. The challenge is not only deciding what to launch, but also communicating the analysis in a way that marketing, product, and engineering can act on quickly.
Key Stakeholders
Marketing wants a simple story and clear customer messaging before the campaign deadline. Product wants confidence that the recommendation supports adoption and monetization goals. Engineering wants clarity on scope, technical feasibility, and what can be deferred without creating rework.
Constraints
- Launch recommendation due in 4 weeks
- Only $120,000 remains in launch budget for research, creative, and analytics support
- Engineering has capacity for only 2 major features and 1 pricing experiment this quarter
- Marketing campaign assets must be finalized by the end of Week 3
- Finance requires a revenue forecast with 3 scenarios before approving launch
Complications
- The analysis shows the highest-revenue option is also the most technically complex and would delay launch by 6 weeks.
- Marketing leadership is already preparing messaging for a simpler package that may underperform financially.
- Engineering disagrees with one key assumption in the usage forecast and wants additional validation.
Your Task
- Create a stakeholder communication plan for marketing, product, and engineering.
- Propose how you would present the analysis, trade-offs, and recommendation to each audience.
- Define the decision-making process, including meeting cadence, owners, and escalation path.
- Build a 4-week execution plan that aligns analysis sign-off, messaging, scope decisions, and launch readiness.
- Identify the top risks to alignment and launch timing, and how you would mitigate them.
