Resolve a cross-functional conflict blocking DashPass at global scale

Problem Statement Description

Product context: DoorDash is a local commerce and delivery platform; its products include restaurant delivery, DashPass, grocery and retail delivery, merchant tools, and dasher tools.

DoorDash is looking to scale DashPass across multiple markets and categories, including restaurants, grocery, convenience, and other local commerce use cases. The initiative has become blocked by a cross-functional conflict: teams disagree on how to expand while protecting delivery reliability, Dasher earnings, merchant economics, customer value, and overall marketplace health.

In this execution interview, you are the PM responsible for unblocking the initiative and driving alignment across Product, Operations, Finance, Growth, Merchant, Dasher, Legal/Policy, Data Science, and regional market teams. The conflict is not simply a communication issue; it involves real trade-offs around incentives, service levels, costs, market readiness, and the consistency of the DashPass experience globally.

You should frame how you would diagnose the disagreement, identify decision owners, sequence work, create operating mechanisms, and define go/no-go criteria for launch or expansion. The interviewer is looking for how you manage ambiguity, cross-functional tension, execution risk, and marketplace complexity without jumping directly to a feature idea.

The execution plan should consider:

- The specific conflict: who is misaligned, what each team is optimizing for, and which decisions are blocked

- Marketplace dependencies across consumers, Dashers, merchants, and DoorDash’s unit economics

- Regional differences in supply density, delivery reliability, category mix, regulation, and customer expectations

- Ownership model, escalation path, decision rights, and cross-functional operating cadence

- Sequencing of workstreams, including analysis, experimentation, market readiness, policy decisions, and launch planning

- Go/no-go criteria, success metrics, guardrails, and rollback triggers

- Communication plan for executives, regional teams, frontline operations, merchants, and Dashers

- Key launch risks, including degraded service quality, Dasher dissatisfaction, merchant pushback, customer confusion, or margin erosion

Your goal is to describe how you would lead the organization from conflict to a clear execution path for scaling DashPass globally, while preserving trust across the marketplace and making trade-offs explicit.