Project Context
Anduril is preparing a 10-week release of Lattice that adds a new operator workflow for fusing alerts from fixed towers and autonomous systems into a single incident queue. The work spans 11 engineers, 1 product manager, 1 designer, 1 test lead, and 2 field reliability engineers, and it has become urgent after two recent customer demos surfaced conflicting decisions on scope, UI behavior, and rollout sequencing.
Key Stakeholders
The Engineering Director wants the release out before a scheduled customer evaluation in 10 weeks. The Program Manager for Mission Autonomy wants clear ownership and decision records because adjacent teams depend on interface contracts. The Field Operations lead wants operator training and rollback steps locked early to avoid disruption during live exercises. The Product lead is pushing for two additional workflow features requested by a strategic customer, even though the team is already near capacity.
Constraints
- Timeline: 10 weeks to customer evaluation; no slip beyond that date
- Budget: $120K remaining, mostly for field validation and test support
- Team capacity: 11 engineers; 2 are only available at 50% due to production support on another Lattice deployment
- Dependencies: interface sign-off from the Mission Autonomy team by end of Week 3; security review by Week 6; field test window only available in Weeks 8-9
- Quality bar: no Sev-1 issues in customer evaluation; rollback to prior workflow must be possible in under 30 minutes
Complications
- Decisions are currently spread across Slack, meeting notes, and Jira comments, and teams have already implemented conflicting assumptions on alert prioritization.
- A strategic customer has requested a late scope addition in Week 2, and Sales is signaling it may be needed for renewal.
- The Mission Autonomy team has warned their API contract may change once during the project.
Deliverables
- Define a decision-making and documentation process that ensures decisions are recorded, communicated, and followed through on.
- Build a 10-week execution plan with milestones, dependencies, and owners.
- Propose how you would handle the late customer request without losing the evaluation date.
- Identify the top risks to execution and how you would mitigate them.
- Specify the metrics and review mechanisms you would use to confirm decisions are actually being implemented as agreed.
