Project Background

At DoorDash, you are the program manager for a new courier batching feature intended to reduce delivery costs in mid-sized US cities. The project team includes 6 engineers, 1 data scientist, 1 designer, 1 operations lead, and you. Leadership wants the feature launched before the start of the holiday peak, giving the team 8 weeks to decide scope, validate readiness, and execute.

Key Stakeholders

The GM of Logistics wants a broad launch to hit quarterly cost targets. The Head of Merchant Experience is concerned that batching could increase delivery times and hurt merchant satisfaction. Engineering wants to avoid adding last-minute city-specific exceptions, while Finance is pushing for a launch in at least 10 cities to justify the $420K already invested.

Constraints

You have a remaining execution budget of $160K, no additional headcount, and only 8 weeks before code freeze. Historical pilot data from 4 cities shows batching reduces cost per order by 6.8%, but in 2 cities it also increased late deliveries by 2.4 percentage points and lowered merchant NPS by 5 points. The routing service team can support only 3 major backend changes before freeze, and legal requires 10 business days to review any courier incentive changes.

Complications

1. The GM of Logistics has already told the COO that a 10-city launch is "on track," before final readiness review.
2. One pilot city's data quality is questionable because courier GPS pings were missing for 18% of trips.
3. A competing initiative to improve ETA accuracy is using the same routing engineers during weeks 3-5.

Your Task

1. Build an 8-week execution plan and recommend launch scope using the pilot data.
2. Explain how you would use data to change the GM's position if a 10-city launch is too risky.
3. Define launch criteria, rollback thresholds, and stakeholder communication points.
4. Identify the top execution risks and mitigation actions.
5. Propose how to handle the questionable pilot data without stalling the decision.