VPE Review

# /cs:vpe-review — VPE Forcing Questions **Command:** `/cs:vpe-review <plan>` The throughput-first VPE pressure-tests any plan touching eng operations. Six questions before any delivery commitment, eng hiring expansion, team restructure, or production-discipline change. ## When to Run - Before quarterly delivery commitment (sprint planning, OKR review) - Before approving an eng hiring plan - Before restructuring eng teams (splitting/merging squads, adding tribes) - Before deciding whether to hire a VPE separately from CTO (or merge them) - When production incidents are increasing - When sprint velocity is dropping but everyone says "we're working hard" ## The Six VPE Questions ### 1. What's the cycle time, and where does work wait? **No DORA, no diagnosis.** - Lead Time for Changes is the single best health metric - If you can't decompose cycle time into stages, you can't fix the bottleneck - Run `delivery_throughput_analyzer.py` ### 2. What's the DORA performance level on all 4 metrics? **One Elite metric and three Lows = bad. Four Highs = healthy.** - Deployment Frequency, Lead Time, MTTR, Change Failure Rate - The worst metric defines overall level - Fix lead time first; everything else follows ### 3. Where is the hiring funnel leaking? **"Can't find good engineers" is wrong.** - Specific stage is over-filtering OR top-of-funnel volume is too low OR offer-to-accept is broken - Run `eng_hiring_funnel_calculator.py` - If offer-to-accept < 70%, comp is below market or close discipline is weak ### 4. Is the team structure healthy for the headcount? **5-9 ICs per squad; 5-8 ICs per EM; 4-6 EMs per director.** - Run `eng_team_structure_designer.py` - Manager-trigger fires when 5+ ICs have no dedicated EM - Director-trigger fires when 3+ EMs report directly to VPE/CTO ### 5. What's the production discipline maturity? **Level 1-5; aim for Level 3 at growth stage.** - On-call rotation ≥ 6 people - Severity-defined incident response with blameless postmortems - SLOs on customer-facing services (pair with `engineering/slo-architect/`) - Continuous deployment OR scheduled — not "usually one, sometimes the other" ### 6. Are we adding a VPE separately, or is CTO doing both? **If CTO is spending > 50% on management vs strategy, VPE is needed.** - Or: VPE complement when CTO is co-founder more comfortable with strategy - VPE owns operating model; CTO owns architecture - At small scale (< 20 eng), one person can do both ## Workflow ```bash # 1. Delivery throughput python ../../../skills/vpe-advisor/scripts/delivery_throughput_analyzer.py sprint_metrics.json # 2. Hiring funnel python ../../../skills/vpe-advisor/scripts/eng_hiring_funnel_calculator.py funnel.json # 3. Team structure python ../../../skills/vpe-advisor/scripts/eng_team_structure_designer.py team.json ``` ## Output Format ```markdown # VPE Review: <plan> **Date:** YYYY-MM-DD ## The Decision Being Made [throughput | hiring | structure | production | VPE-vs-CTO] ## Delivery Throughput (if applicable) - DORA overall: Elite / High / Medium / Low - Worst metric: <DF | LT | MTTR | FR> - Bottleneck: <stage> (X% of cycle time) - Top fix: <action + owner> ## Hiring Funnel (if applicable) - End-to-end conversion: X% - Weakest stage: <stage> - Pipeline gap: +N candidates needed - Top fix: <specific action> ## Team Structure (if applicable) - Recommended: <informal pods / squads / tribes> - Manager trigger fired: yes/no - Director trigger fired: yes/no - Action: <hire EM | hire director | split squad> ## Production Discipline (if applicable) - Current maturity level: 1-5 - Next practice to add: <specific> - SLO coverage: X / Y services ## Verdict 🟢 SHIP | 🟡 SHARPEN | 🔴 BLOCK ## Next Steps [3 concrete actions] ``` ## Routing - `/cs:cto-review` — for architectural causes of throughput problems - `cs-chro-advisor` agent — for hiring funnel comp/leveling issues - `/cs:cfo-review` — for cost-per-hire envelope and eng budget - `/cs:ciso-review` — for production discipline + compliance overlap - `/cs:decide` — log the verdict - `/cs:freeze 30` — on multi-year hiring commitments ## Related - Agent: [`cs-vpe-advisor`](../../agents/cs-vpe-advisor.md) - Skill: [`vpe-advisor`](../../../skills/vpe-advisor/SKILL.md) - Adjacent: `../../../../engineering/slo-architect/`, `../../../../engineering/feature-flags-architect/`, `../../../../engineering/chaos-engineering/` --- **Version:** 1.0.0