Launch Amherst Order Status Redesign

Project Background

Amherst Restaurant wants to launch a redesigned order status experience across the Amherst Restaurant Guest App and the in-store Amherst Kitchen Display System before the holiday catering season. The goal is to reduce "Where is my order?" support contacts and improve pickup readiness accuracy for high-volume locations. You are the Engineering Manager leading execution for a 9-person cross-functional team with 10 weeks until the announced launch date.

Key Stakeholders

The VP of Digital wants the launch before the holiday campaign starts and has already shared the date with Marketing. The Head of Restaurant Operations wants near-perfect status accuracy because store teams will rely on Amherst Kitchen Display System timing during peak lunch and catering windows. Customer Support wants fewer order-status tickets, while the Staff Engineer is concerned the current event pipeline has known reliability gaps that could create incorrect statuses in production.

Constraints

• Timeline: 10 weeks, with a hard launch target of November 4
• Team: 4 backend engineers, 2 mobile engineers, 1 web engineer, 1 QA engineer, 1 designer
• Budget: $85,000 remaining, including vendor QA support and analytics instrumentation
• Dependency: Amherst Event Stream team can only provide 1 shared engineer for 6 hours/week
• Current system issue: order event delivery is only 97.8% reliable during peak traffic; Operations requires 99.5%+ for broad rollout
• Scope request: Marketing wants a new live driver map, but design and backend estimates add 3 extra weeks

Complications

1. Two flagship stores report that prep-time estimates are inconsistent during Friday lunch rush, which could undermine trust in the new experience.
2. Marketing has already scheduled campaign assets that describe the redesign as a "nationwide launch," even though only 20 of 65 stores have validated kitchen timing data.

Your Task

1. Define the launch plan, including phases, milestones, and owners.
2. Recommend the trade-off you would make across speed, quality, and scope, and justify it.
3. Propose whether Amherst Restaurant should do a full launch, phased rollout, or delay.
4. Identify the top risks, mitigation steps, and rollback criteria.
5. Specify the success metrics you would use for the first 30 days after launch.