Launch Seller Payouts Before Peak Season

Project Background

ShopHub, a mid-market e-commerce platform, needs to launch a new seller payouts system before the holiday season. The current manual payout process causes 5-day delays, high support volume, and reconciliation errors for marketplace sellers. You are the program manager leading a cross-functional team of 11 people with a hard 12-week deadline tied to Q4 revenue goals.

Key Stakeholders

The GM of Marketplace wants the full launch completed before October 1 to support seller acquisition. Finance requires accurate reconciliation and audit controls before any funds move through the new system. Engineering wants to avoid destabilizing the existing checkout stack during peak traffic prep. Compliance is concerned about KYC and tax reporting gaps, while Sales is pushing for an early release for two strategic enterprise sellers.

Constraints

The project has a remaining budget of $180,000, including vendor fees and external security review. The team includes 4 backend engineers, 2 frontend engineers, 1 designer, 1 QA lead, 1 data analyst, 1 compliance manager, and you as PM. Critical dependencies include a third-party payment processor integration that takes 4 weeks for certification, a finance ledger update owned by another team with only 30% allocation, and a mandatory security review in Week 8. No additional headcount is approved.

Complications

1. The payment processor has already warned that certification may slip by 10 business days.
2. One backend engineer who owns the ledger integration is scheduled for planned leave during Weeks 6-7.
3. The VP of Sales has promised the two enterprise sellers an August pilot date that is not yet approved by Finance.

Your Task

1. Build a 12-week execution plan with milestones, owners, and dependency management.
2. Recommend whether to do a phased launch or full launch, and explain the trade-offs.
3. Define launch readiness criteria, rollback triggers, and post-launch monitoring.
4. Identify the top execution risks and how you would mitigate them.
5. Explain how you would align Finance, Engineering, Compliance, and Sales on scope and timeline.