Project Background
PulseFit is a subscription-based habit tracking app with 4.2M MAU and slowing user growth. A recent product review showed that users who create a shared accountability group in their first 7 days retain 18% better and invite 2.4 additional users on average, but only 6% of new users discover that workflow today.
You are the PM leading a 10-person cross-functional squad tasked with turning this hidden growth lever into a launchable initiative before the company’s Q3 planning review in 12 weeks. The CEO wants a measurable growth story for investors, while Engineering wants to avoid destabilizing the onboarding flow ahead of a major Android rewrite.
Key Stakeholders
- Growth Marketing wants a broad referral push to hit acquisition targets.
- Product Design wants to redesign onboarding to surface group creation naturally.
- Engineering wants to limit scope to low-risk changes and avoid app store delays.
- Data Science wants a clean experiment with clear attribution.
- Customer Support is concerned about spam complaints and invite abuse.
Constraints
- Timeline: 12 weeks total, with launch by September 15.
- Budget: $180,000 incremental budget for design, analytics, lifecycle messaging, and limited contractor support.
- Team: 4 engineers, 1 designer, 1 data scientist, 1 QA lead, 1 growth marketer, 1 PM, 1 analyst.
- Dependencies: mobile release train every 2 weeks; legal review required for referral incentives; analytics instrumentation backlog already has 14 open items.
Complications
- The Android tech lead is allocated only 50% because of the rewrite program.
- Legal has warned that cash-like referral rewards may trigger review delays in two key markets.
- The VP of Growth wants to promise a 10% new-user lift in the next earnings prep deck before testing is complete.
Your Task
- Build a 12-week execution plan to validate and launch the growth lever.
- Define the MVP scope and key trade-offs versus a full onboarding redesign.
- Align stakeholders on success criteria, experiment design, and launch readiness.
- Identify top risks, mitigations, and rollback triggers.
- Recommend how to communicate likely impact to executives before final results are in.
