Coordinating a regulatory-deadline product launch
Programme leadership for a 14-week launch across product, compliance, and engineering, against a regulatory deadline that could not slip.
A fintech needed to launch a new product to satisfy a regulatory window opening on a fixed date. Three internal workstreams — product, compliance, and engineering — each had partial ownership; none had end-to-end accountability. The CEO asked us to take the programme on for the duration of the launch.
We embedded for fourteen weeks. The first week was spent reading the existing artefacts and meeting each workstream lead one-on-one. The second week produced a single integrated plan with weekly milestones, owners, and the decisions each milestone required.
For the remaining twelve weeks we held the cadence: weekly programme calls with a strict agenda, decision logs published within two hours, and an escalation path for the kinds of cross-functional questions that previously stalled in inboxes. We did not displace anyone — every workstream lead stayed in role; we held the connective tissue between them.
The product shipped two days before the regulatory deadline. The closeout session covered the lessons the internal team would carry forward. We did not propose continuation work.