Retail Inventory Sync Pilot Project Manager Simulation — Starbucks

The scenario

Starbucks moves an enormous share of its food through the mobile app, and in the Western region roughly one in nine mobile orders now contains at least one item the store cannot actually hand over. The customer pays at 7:06, walks eleven blocks, and finds out at the handoff plane. The register knew the store had sold its last one. The app did not. The two systems have never spoken to each other in real time, because the app reads a menu and the register reads a sale, and nothing in between holds a number that means what is on the shelf right now. The Retail Technology SteerCo funded a narrow answer to that: forty high-volume stores across three Western-region districts, fourteen weeks, $1.5 million, and a single question. Can a live stock signal move from the store to the app fast enough, and accurately enough, that a customer is never sold something the store cannot make? Halberd Group builds the sync service and the store handheld application. The mobile product team owns what the customer actually sees. In-store systems engineering owns the registers. Supply chain systems owns the inventory record everything reads from. None of those teams report to you. Corinne Boyle sponsored this on the promise that it would produce a recommendation rather than a rollout, and she has to carry that recommendation into the customer-experience operating review whether or not it is the answer she wanted. You have fourteen weeks, three of which are already spent. Your job is to find out whether this works — and to know the difference between a system that is synced and a shelf that is right.

What you'll do as the project manager

• →Cut mobile-order stock-out refunds across the 40 pilot stores by 60% against the pre-pilot baseline of roughly 2,900 tickets per month
• →Hold end-to-end sync latency under 90 seconds from register sale to app availability at the 95th percentile
• →Reach 85% or better agreement between the synced stock signal and a physical count, audited across all three pilot districts
• →Install Zebra TC22 handhelds at all 40 stores and reach daily use with no added labour minutes in the 6:30-9:30 AM peak
• →Deliver a go / no-go recommendation to the CX Operating Review by Day 27, carrying the evidence a national business case would require

Project management skills you'll build

The challenges you'll navigate

• •Three of fourteen weeks are gone and no handheld has left the Renton warehouse
• •On-hand accuracy in the system of record has never been audited at store level, and every projection assumes it is sound
• •The mobile release train is fixed; a missed Thursday cut costs the pilot a fortnight of live measurement it cannot buy back
• •Four owning teams, no shared reporting line, one shared deadline
• •The pilot's data quality depends on store partner behaviour during the busiest ninety minutes of their day

Technology & stakeholders

You'll manage 7 stakeholders, including Corinne Boyle (VP, Store Operations Excellence), Elias Teitelbaum (Sr. Director, Retail Technology Delivery), Simone Lund (Principal Product Manager, Mobile Order & Pay), and more.

What you'll walk away with

A verified, shareable record of a completed enterprise project — plus the PMO deliverables you produced along the way (charter, project plan, SteerCo deck, closure document). It's real, demonstrable project management experience you can put on your resume and speak to in interviews.

Frequently asked questions

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