Sustain Delivery During Peak Workload

Project Background

Notion's Enterprise Admin team is preparing a major security feature launch: audit log exports for large customers. The feature is committed to 5 design partners and must ship in 8 weeks to support $3.2M in renewals this quarter. You are the program manager coordinating a 9-person cross-functional team during a peak period that is expected to require several 55-60 hour weeks.

Key Stakeholders

The VP of Product wants the committed launch date preserved because Sales has tied renewals to it. The Engineering Manager is concerned about burnout and wants to avoid sustained overtime beyond launch week. The Head of Customer Success needs the top 5 customers included in the initial rollout, while Security Legal insists on a complete compliance review before any customer data export goes live.

Constraints

The team includes 4 engineers, 1 designer, 1 QA lead, 1 PM, 1 legal partner, and you as PgM. Budget for external support is capped at $40,000. Two engineers are also spending 20% of their time on production support. The launch date is fixed for June 30, and the compliance review must be completed by June 20. No additional headcount is approved.

Complications

1. One senior backend engineer has already signaled risk of burnout after two consecutive heavy weeks.
2. A top enterprise customer has requested SSO-based export controls that were not in the original scope.
3. QA found intermittent failures in export jobs under high-volume load, and root cause is still unclear.

Your Task

1. Build an 8-week execution plan that keeps the June 30 launch on track while managing your own time and stress during peak workload.
2. Explain how you would prioritize work, protect team capacity, and decide what to cut or defer.
3. Define how you would communicate trade-offs and risks to stakeholders with competing priorities.
4. Propose a personal operating model for a 60-hour peak week, including delegation, escalation triggers, and calendar management.
5. Identify the top risks to delivery and how you would mitigate them without creating unsustainable team burnout.