Project Background
MercuryOps, a B2B procurement software company, is replacing its email-based vendor onboarding process with a self-serve vendor portal. The project has a 10-person cross-functional team and must launch before the company’s annual customer conference in 12 weeks, where Sales has promised a live demo to 40 enterprise prospects.
Key Stakeholders
The VP of Sales wants custom approval workflows and branded vendor pages for the conference demo. The Head of Compliance insists on audit logs, role-based access control, and mandatory tax-document validation before any launch. Engineering wants to limit scope to core onboarding because two engineers are already tied up supporting a billing migration. Customer Success wants bulk invite and status-tracking features to reduce support tickets.
Constraints
- Timeline: 12 weeks, with no extension approved
- Budget: $180,000 remaining, including up to $35,000 for contractors
- Team: 4 engineers, 1 designer, 1 QA lead, 1 PM, 1 data analyst, 2 part-time compliance reviewers
- Dependencies: SSO integration from the identity team due in Week 5; tax-document API contract not finalized until Week 3
- Launch requirement: conference demo in Week 12 and pilot with 3 existing customers by Week 10
Complications
- In Week 2, Sales escalates and asks for two additional demo-ready features not in the approved roadmap.
- In Week 4, Compliance flags that the current design does not meet audit evidence requirements for regulated customers.
- The identity team warns that SSO may slip by one week because of a security incident.
Your Task
- Build an execution plan that gets a viable launch out on time while addressing stakeholder pushback.
- Explain how you would respond to Sales, Compliance, and Engineering when their priorities conflict.
- Define what stays in scope for the pilot, what moves post-launch, and how you would communicate those trade-offs.
- Identify the top risks, mitigation actions, and decision points that would trigger escalation.
- Specify success metrics for the pilot and conference launch.
