Define Success for New Onboarding

Project Background

FinFlow, a B2B expense management SaaS company, is redesigning its self-serve onboarding flow for small and mid-sized businesses. The current flow converts 42% of signups into activated workspaces within 14 days, and leadership believes a simpler onboarding experience could improve activation and reduce support costs before the next sales quarter.

You are the program manager coordinating a cross-functional team of 10 people: 3 engineers, 2 designers, 1 data analyst, 1 product manager, 1 lifecycle marketer, 1 customer support lead, and 1 QA engineer. The CEO wants the new flow launched in 8 weeks so it can support a paid acquisition push next quarter.

Key Stakeholders

The VP of Product wants higher activation and faster time-to-value. The Head of Sales wants more users reaching the "invite finance admin" step because it correlates with paid conversion. The Support lead wants fewer setup tickets. The Engineering manager is concerned about shipping too much scope in one release because the team is also maintaining billing infrastructure.

Constraints

• Timeline: 8 weeks total, with no extension approved
• Budget: $120,000 for design, engineering, analytics, and user research
• Team capacity: 10 people, with only 2 engineers available full-time
• Dependency: billing team can support only 1 API change during the project
• Launch target: at least 50% of new signups must enter the new flow at launch

Complications

1. Historical onboarding instrumentation is incomplete, so baseline funnel data is missing for two key steps.
2. Marketing wants to add a new company-size segmentation screen mid-project, but design estimates it will add 1.5 weeks.
3. Legal requires updated consent language if any new data fields are collected.

Your Task

1. Define the success criteria for the new onboarding flow, including primary metrics, guardrails, and qualitative signals.
2. Build an execution plan for the 8-week launch, including milestones, owners, and dependencies.
3. Recommend what should be in scope for launch versus deferred.
4. Identify the top risks to launch and how you would mitigate them.
5. Explain how you would evaluate success in the first 30 days after launch.