How did you handle a situation where you couldn't meet a deadline?

Situation: During the device certification test process with our carrier customer, we encountered a large number of defects and could not meet the lab exit schedule

Task:  I worked with the certification team to group the defects into different severity level and different defect categories to better proritize and identify a resolution plan to each

Action:  We grouped the defects into four severity levels with level 1 as absolutely critical to close for lab exit, level 2 being acceptable for conditional lab exit with a resolution plan, and level 3 are defects that can been resolved in the MR release, and level 4 are information only or defects that could be waived by the customers.  We worked with developers and engineering teams to provide Root cause analysis to identify the root cause and determine solutions.  We also identified there are features that were outside of the MVP scope and we negotiated with the customer to deliver the features in a MR release in 6 months.  This proposal actually worked better with the customer's launch strategy in which some new features were planned to be activated at a later time.

Result:  We were able to resolve the severity level 1 defects on time and launched the devices per original schedule.  The customer agreed to delay one new feature to a 2nd MR plan six months later.  We delivered the fixes to the severity 2 defects in the 1st MR plan 3 months after the device launch.  The customer was pleased that this mitigation plan allowed them to keep the original go to market schedule while maintaining the product quality.

In the Meraki integration project, the supply chain process required significant optimization of the entire flow. To achieve this, most of the shipping-related process needed to be modified. However, the team lacked sufficient time to complete the work because the planned use of an adapter did not work, requiring me to redesign the flow.

With limited time remaining before system integration testing (SIT), the cross-functional teams and other tracks were ready to test their code, and management was unwilling to postpone SIT and Cycle 1 testing. Since there was an additional round of SIT and Cycle 2 testing planned, I decided to proceed with the changes that the team had already completed. We migrated the completed code to the test instance and communicated that only Phase 1 of the changes would be released initially, while the remaining changes would be delivered during Cycle 2 testing.

I ensured the Phase 1 delivery was designed to avoid impacting the end-to-end flow, allowing the other teams to proceed with testing their portions of the code. This approach ensured that other teams' deadlines were not affected. I also informed the cross-functional teams that the OTM and GTM changes were completed, and the remaining shipping-related code optimization would be delivered before Cycle 2 testing, along with the next round of SIT.

By taking this approach, I ensured that complete testing was not impacted and that the project stayed on track.