Ship AppFolio Payments Autopay Upgrade

Project Background

AppFolio wants to launch an upgrade to AppFolio Payments Autopay that reduces failed rent collections by adding smarter retry logic, clearer resident messaging in the Resident Portal, and a new admin review flow in AppFolio Property Manager. The feature is targeted for the start of peak month-end rent collection, and leadership believes it can reduce support tickets and improve on-time payments for mid-market property managers.

You are the engineering manager leading execution across a team of 10: 4 backend engineers, 3 frontend engineers, 1 QA engineer, 1 product manager, and 1 designer. The target launch date is 10 weeks away, but the current build has known edge-case defects in payment retries and notification timing. Product wants to ship on time to capture Q3 impact, while Risk and Support are pushing for more validation before exposing the feature broadly.

Key Stakeholders

• GM, Payments wants the launch before month-end collections begin and is focused on adoption and revenue impact.
• Risk/Compliance wants low payment error rates and no duplicate-charge incidents.
• Customer Support wants fewer resident and property manager escalations during rollout.
• Sales/Customer Success has already previewed the feature to 15 strategic customers and wants a firm date.
• Engineering Director wants sustainable delivery and no production instability in AppFolio Payments.

Constraints

• Timeline: 10 weeks to launch
• Budget: $120,000 for external testing, analytics instrumentation, and launch support
• Team capacity: no additional headcount; 2 engineers are also spending 20% on production support
• Dependency: payment processor certification requires 15 business days after code freeze
• Quality bar: duplicate-charge rate must stay below 0.05% during rollout

Complications

1. A recent internal test found a race condition that can trigger duplicate retry attempts for a small subset of failed ACH payments.
2. The PM wants all three scope areas shipped together, but engineering estimates the admin review flow alone is 3 extra weeks.
3. Customer Success is asking for all 15 strategic customers in the first wave, while Support can only staff a pilot of 5 accounts.

Your Task

1. Propose a launch plan that balances speed and quality.
2. Recommend what scope ships now vs. later, with rationale.
3. Define rollout stages, go/no-go criteria, and rollback triggers.
4. Identify stakeholder conflicts and how you would align them.
5. Specify the metrics and risk mitigations you would use through the first 30 days post-launch.