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Handling a critical launch-blocking bug

Project Management · intermediate

Your team is two days from launching a critical subscription feature. QA uncovers a P1 bug affecting 8% of users that will take an extra 3-4 days to fix. How do you assess the situation and decide on the next steps?

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Community approaches

Pavlo’s approach

The good news is that it's P1 not P0 😁 Since the feature is critical we can't ship it with bugs. Since there is a way to identify who will be affected by the bug, I would propose to do partial release for other 92% of users. If partial release isn't possible, then I would work with team to get all the details about the issue, including accuracy of the estimate. Then I would communicate the information to the stakeholders proposing to delay the release by 1-2 days.