Project Background
NovaPay is preparing to launch a new payments API for mid-market e-commerce merchants. The product is built by a 10-person engineering team and must go live in 8 weeks to support signed customer commitments for the next quarter.
Recent internal testing found inconsistent error handling, weak regression coverage, and no formal release gates. Leadership wants a clear execution plan for how you would ensure product quality without slipping the launch.
Key Stakeholders
The VP of Product wants the launch date preserved to hit revenue targets. The Engineering Manager wants to reduce production risk and avoid a rushed release. Customer Success needs a stable launch for 5 design partners already onboarded. The Security Lead insists on closing critical vulnerabilities before production, even if scope is reduced.
Constraints
- Timeline: 8 weeks until launch
- Budget: $120,000 remaining for tooling, external testing, and contractor QA support
- Team: 6 backend engineers, 2 frontend engineers, 1 QA lead, 1 product manager
- Dependencies: PCI compliance review due in Week 5; third-party fraud vendor certification due in Week 6
- Current state: 42 open Sev-2 bugs, automated test coverage at 58%, and only one staging environment
Complications
- Two senior backend engineers are each allocated 30% to an ongoing incident reduction program.
- One design partner has requested a custom webhook flow that is not in the original scope but could affect core testing.
- The fraud vendor has warned that certification may slip by up to 10 days.
Your Task
- Define a quality-focused execution plan for the next 8 weeks.
- Specify the methodologies, release gates, and testing strategy you would use to ensure product quality.
- Recommend scope trade-offs if quality or timeline comes under pressure.
- Identify key risks, owners, and mitigation actions.
- Define launch success criteria and post-launch monitoring for the first 30 days.
