Project Background

BCG Digital Ventures is preparing to launch a new client-facing venture platform that lets operations teams configure workflows, approvals, and reporting in a single product. The MVP is already 70% built, but the engineering team has accumulated meaningful technical debt in the authentication service, event logging, and test automation while rushing early demos.

You are the Engineering Manager for a 10-person squad: 5 backend engineers, 2 frontend engineers, 1 QA engineer, 1 product manager, and 1 designer. The client steering committee expects a production launch in 10 weeks because the platform is tied to a signed pilot worth $1.8M in first-year revenue. Leadership wants speed, but the current architecture is causing slower development and rising defect risk.

Key Stakeholders

The client CTO wants the committed launch date preserved. The BCG Digital Ventures Venture Lead wants a polished MVP that can be used as a case study for future business development. The Engineering Director is concerned that shipping on the current foundation will create reliability issues and an expensive stabilization period. The client operations lead is pushing for two late feature additions that would increase scope.

Constraints

• Timeline: 10 weeks to production launch
• Budget remaining: $220,000
• Team size fixed at 10; no new hires or contractors
• 3 critical debt items already identified: flaky CI pipeline, auth service with manual role mapping, and incomplete observability
• Compliance review must be completed by Week 7
• UAT with 25 client users must begin in Week 8

Complications

1. Two enterprise clients have already been told the launch will happen this quarter.
2. One senior backend engineer is allocated 30% to another BCG Digital Ventures portfolio incident for the next 4 weeks.
3. The client operations lead is threatening to escalate if workflow export is not included in MVP.

Your Task

1. Propose a 10-week execution plan that balances technical debt reduction with shipping the MVP on time.
2. Define what technical debt must be fixed before launch, what can be deferred, and how you would justify those trade-offs.
3. Create a stakeholder communication and escalation plan for scope, timeline, and quality risks.
4. Define launch readiness criteria, rollback triggers, and post-launch stabilization priorities.
5. Identify the top risks to delivery and how you would mitigate them.