Project Context

CloudForge provides CI/CD and deployment automation software to mid-market SaaS companies. A top customer, Northstar Health, is rolling out CloudForge's new deployment process across 120 internal services, but their first production wave caused failed releases, environment drift, and confusion between their platform team and application owners. You are the program manager assigned to support the customer-facing rollout recovery and get the deployment process back on track within 6 weeks.

The joint project team includes 8 people from CloudForge (2 PMs, 3 engineers, 1 solutions architect, 1 support lead, 1 customer success manager) and 6 people from Northstar Health (platform lead, release manager, 3 application owners, 1 security engineer). The issue is urgent because Northstar has paused 40 planned service migrations and is threatening to delay a $1.2M renewal unless rollout stability improves before the next quarterly business review.

Key Stakeholders

CloudForge leadership wants to protect the renewal and avoid custom work that will not scale. Northstar's platform lead wants a fast technical fix, while their security engineer insists on stricter approval gates before any further production rollout. The customer success manager wants visible progress within 10 days, but engineering prefers to slow down and address root causes first.

Constraints

• Timeline: 6 weeks to restore rollout confidence
• Budget: $90,000 for support, training, and temporary engineering allocation
• Team capacity: No additional headcount; 3 CloudForge engineers available at 50% allocation
• Dependency: Customer change advisory board meets only once per week
• Rollout scope: 120 services total; only 15 can be included in the next controlled wave

Complications

1. Root cause is not singular: some failures are due to misconfigured deployment templates, while others come from customer-owned environment inconsistencies.
2. Northstar's VP of Engineering has already told executives they expect a full rollout restart in 3 weeks, which the technical team believes is unrealistic.

Deliverables

1. Create a 6-week execution plan to stabilize the deployment rollout.
2. Define how you would support the customer while balancing speed, risk, and scope.
3. Propose stakeholder communication and escalation mechanisms.
4. Recommend launch criteria, rollback triggers, and a phased restart plan.
5. Identify top risks and mitigation actions for the next rollout wave.