Project Context
Etsy is preparing to launch Instant Seller Replies, a new feature that suggests one-tap responses for sellers answering buyer questions in the mobile app. The feature is intended to reduce seller response time and improve buyer conversion before the holiday shopping season. You are the program manager coordinating a cross-functional team of 10 people across product, engineering, design, data, and support, with an executive target to launch in 8 weeks.
Key Stakeholders
The VP of Product wants a visible holiday launch and is focused on adoption. The Engineering Manager wants to limit scope because the messaging platform already has reliability issues. The Head of Trust & Safety is concerned that inaccurate suggested replies could create policy or customer support risks. The Support Operations Lead wants fewer seller complaints and lower ticket volume, while the Data Science Lead has limited bandwidth and can only support a small set of launch metrics.
Constraints
- Launch deadline: 8 weeks before holiday traffic ramps
- Budget: $120,000 remaining for vendor QA, analytics instrumentation, and support training
- Team: 4 engineers, 1 designer, 1 PM, 1 data analyst, 1 TPM, 2 QA/support partners
- Dependency: messaging backend upgrade completes in 3 weeks and cannot slip more than 5 business days
- Analytics limitation: only 4 new event types can be instrumented before launch
- Rollout limit: feature can initially reach only 20% of US sellers due to infrastructure capacity
Complications
- Early prototype tests show sellers use suggestions often, but some responses are overly generic and may reduce buyer trust.
- Sales and marketing want to promote the feature broadly at launch, but Trust & Safety wants a quiet rollout until quality is proven.
- The data analyst supporting the project is also assigned to a marketplace pricing initiative and is available only 50% of the time.
Deliverables
- Define launch success criteria, including primary metrics, guardrails, and clear thresholds.
- Recommend whether the launch should be full, phased, or beta-only, and explain the trade-offs.
- Create an 8-week execution plan with milestones, owners, and dependency management.
- Identify the top risks to launch quality and how you would mitigate them.
- Propose a 30-day post-launch review plan and decision framework for expansion or rollback.
