Cartwell store launch readiness

Launch remains November 9, with the new payment flow; the team will complete gateway testing, the integration plan and remaining product pages against their October deadlines. The plan is green only if the stock feed lands October 9; the integration schedule leaves about ten days before launch.

Decisions

• ✅ Keep the November 9 launch — the team reaffirmed the date; the steering update will report green with the stock feed on October 9.
• ✅ Use the new payment flow at launch — keeping the old checkout for the first week was removed by the argument that it would mean running two payment integrations during the freeze.

Easy to miss

• The stock-feed chain has little slack: feed October 9 → three weeks of integration testing through October 30 → launch November 9; that leaves about ten days, with no padding in Nate’s plan. The project lead will ask Kofi to join next week; Nate wants same-day notice if Kofi’s date moves.

What the plan rests on

• The November 9 launch holds only if Kofi’s live ERP stock feed arrives October 9 and integration testing runs for three weeks through October 30; if the feed slips, the launch and the campaign built around the new site are at risk.

Tasks

• Dependency chain: Kofi: deliver live stock feed → Dmitri’s team: complete three weeks of integration testing → launch Cartwell store November 9.
• Who waits on whom: Dmitri’s integration testing waits on Kofi’s live stock feed.

Risks and open questions

• 🔴 Dmitri’s capacity is tight across gateway work, old-site on-call and helping Kofi’s team with mapping; the project lead will monitor it, and Dmitri will flag any worsening.
• 🟡 Renewal pricing may rise from February; Tom expects a firm number by mid-October after the pricing committee meets.
• ❓ What will the renewed licence cost? It determines the run-budget impact; Tom will answer the project lead’s written request.

Facts to keep

• Storefront product pages, category pages and search are in Cartwell staging; checkout is complete except for the payment gateway.
• The checkout performance patch is in the release; large-basket cart totals in staging improved from about two seconds to under half a second.
• Content migration covers 4,200 product pages; about 3,000 are moved and checked. The remaining outerwear and camping pages have long size tables, which the team is importing by hand.
• Marketing’s holiday campaign is built around the new site; its gift-guide pages exist only on Cartwell, so a launch-date change moves the campaign.
• Project spend is $212,000 of $480,000, on track against the plan for this point.
• Current licence cost is $96,000 per year; the preliminary, unconfirmed increase estimate is 15–20% (≈$14,400–$19,200 more per year).
• The holiday code freeze runs November 16 through January 4.

Roadmap