Project Background
Notion is preparing to launch Smart Replies, an AI feature that suggests response drafts in comments and team discussions. The feature has tested well internally, and leadership wants it in market before the annual customer conference in 8 weeks to support a broader AI positioning push.
The delivery team includes 1 PM, 1 engineering manager, 6 engineers, 2 data scientists, 1 designer, and 1 QA lead. You are the program manager responsible for deciding whether the feature should launch to 100% of eligible users on day one or through a gradual rollout.
Key Stakeholders
The VP of Product wants a visible, broad launch at the conference. The Head of Trust & Safety is concerned about inaccurate or inappropriate suggestions reaching enterprise customers. Sales wants the feature enabled quickly for 20 strategic accounts in renewal discussions, while Engineering wants to avoid a support spike because the inference service is already running at 72% peak capacity.
Constraints
- Launch decision must be finalized in 10 business days
- Remaining launch budget: $120,000
- No additional headcount approved
- Model quality review is only complete for English-language workspaces
- Infrastructure team can increase serving capacity by only 15% before conference week
- Legal requires an auditable rollback path within 15 minutes of incident detection
Complications
- A recent beta with 500 workspaces showed a 4.8% increase in comment replies, but 1.9% of generated suggestions were flagged as low quality by users.
- One enterprise design partner is requesting full access for all 18,000 employees before the conference and has threatened to reference the commitment in renewal negotiations.
- Support has warned that they can absorb at most 40 additional tickets per week during conference month.
Your Task
- Recommend whether to launch to all eligible users or use a phased rollout, and explain the decision criteria.
- Define the rollout plan, gating thresholds, and rollback triggers.
- Identify the stakeholders you would align and how you would handle conflicting priorities.
- Propose launch success metrics and guardrails for the first 30 days.
- Outline the execution plan to reach launch readiness within 8 weeks.
