Handbook
Engineering Leadership Pack
Architecture target (AFF v0.1). Implementation flags live in implementation-status.md. Do not treat this document as a shipped product contract.
Updated
Architecture target (AFF v0.1). Implementation flags live in implementation-status.md. Do not treat this document as a shipped product contract.
Technology strategy and architecture
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.strategy.roadmap_tradeoffs |
“Translated business strategy into a technology roadmap with explicit priorities and trade-offs.” | manager, product, engineering peers |
engineering.architecture.balances_horizons |
“Balanced near-term commitments with technical debt, maintainability, reliability, and long-term architecture.” | architects, engineering peers, manager |
engineering.architecture.guardrails_autonomy |
“Established useful architectural guardrails without unnecessarily centralizing implementation decisions.” | engineering team, architects |
engineering.sourcing.revisits_build_buy |
“Revisited build, buy, or partner decisions when evidence, cost, or risk changed.” | manager, finance, architecture |
engineering.vendor.exit_options |
“Managed strategic platform and vendor dependencies with credible fallback or exit options.” | architecture, security, finance |
Product and customer outcomes
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.product.outcomes_before_output |
“Defined measurable user or business outcomes before committing significant engineering investment.” | product, manager, customer-safe variant |
engineering.discovery.engineers_involved |
“Involved engineers directly in user or customer discovery.” | product, engineers |
engineering.portfolio.stops_low_value |
“Used evidence to stop or reprioritize low-value work.” | product, manager, finance |
engineering.priority.stability |
“Kept priorities stable enough for teams to execute effectively.” | engineers, delivery, product |
engineering.change.tradeoffs_visible |
“Made the impact and trade-offs of priority changes visible to affected teams.” | engineers, product, delivery |
Delivery system and developer experience
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.delivery.small_reversible_changes |
“Enabled teams to make small, frequent, and reversible changes with appropriate automation.” | engineers, SRE, product |
engineering.flow.removes_dependencies |
“Removed avoidable cross-team dependencies, approval delays, and repetitive manual work.” | engineers, peers, delivery |
engineering.platform.responds_to_developers |
“Improved internal platforms and tools in response to developer feedback.” | engineers, platform teams |
engineering.observability.production_feedback |
“Ensured teams had the observability and feedback needed to understand production behavior.” | SRE, operations, engineers |
engineering.metrics.improves_system |
“Used delivery and reliability data to improve the system rather than rank individual engineers.” | engineers, SRE, manager |
engineering.quality.protects_improvement_time |
“Protected capacity for quality, technical debt, and operational improvement.” | engineers, product, manager |
AI and data leadership
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.ai.use_cases_value_risk |
“Selected AI use cases using explicit value, risk, and success criteria rather than novelty.” | product, data/AI, manager |
engineering.ai.policy_clear |
“Made approved AI tools and data-handling rules clear to teams.” | engineers, security, data |
engineering.ai.human_accountability |
“Kept a named human owner accountable for consequential AI-assisted outputs.” | security, product, data/AI |
engineering.ai.verification |
“Required AI-generated code, analysis, and decisions to be critically verified before use.” | engineers, security, QA |
engineering.ai.end_to_end_impact |
“Measured AI impact on end-to-end flow, quality, reliability, security, and cost—not only coding speed.” | manager, finance, engineering peers |
engineering.ai.preserve_judgment |
“Built AI fluency while preserving engineering fundamentals and independent technical judgment.” | engineers, managers |
Security, privacy, and resilience
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.security.design_stage |
“Addressed security and privacy risks during discovery and design rather than only before release.” | security, architects, product |
engineering.supply_chain.risk |
“Managed third-party and software-supply-chain risk as part of engineering planning.” | security, platform, architecture |
engineering.operations.readiness |
“Required ownership, observability, and recovery plans before production launch.” | SRE, operations, product |
engineering.resilience.exercises |
“Prepared teams for material incidents through tested recovery exercises.” | SRE, security, operations |
engineering.incident.learning |
“Led blameless incident learning and ensured corrective actions were completed.” | SRE, engineers, operations |
engineering.risk.communicates_early |
“Communicated material security and reliability risks early, even when delivery might be delayed.” | manager, product, security |
Organization and talent
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.safety.challenge_decisions |
“Created an environment where engineers could challenge decisions and surface bad news.” | engineers, peers |
engineering.careers.dual_paths |
“Developed both people-management and senior individual-contributor leadership paths.” | engineers, manager, people team |
engineering.knowledge.reduces_concentration |
“Reduced concentration of critical knowledge and decision authority.” | engineers, manager, peers |
engineering.learning.apprenticeship |
“Preserved apprenticeship, mentoring, and hands-on learning as AI changed engineering work.” | engineers, managers |
engineering.workload.oncall_sustainable |
“Addressed unsustainable workload, on-call burden, and repeated change fatigue.” | engineers, SRE, direct reports |
engineering.inclusion.remote_access |
“Gave remote, regional, and less-visible contributors equal access to information and opportunity.” | engineers, peers |
Technology economics
| Family ID | Example prompt | Best respondents |
|---|---|---|
engineering.economics.cost_visibility |
“Made cloud, AI, data, platform, software, and vendor costs visible in engineering decisions.” | finance, engineering peers, manager |
engineering.economics.unit_cost |
“Used total cost and unit economics when evaluating architecture and product options.” | finance, architecture, product |
engineering.economics.predeployment |
“Considered cost before deployment rather than relying only on later optimization.” | finance, platform, engineers |
engineering.economics.balanced_tradeoffs |
“Balanced cost targets with reliability, security, time-to-market, and future flexibility.” | manager, product, architecture |
engineering.economics.stops_low_value |
“Stopped or redesigned technology investments when ongoing cost no longer justified value.” | manager, finance, product |
Scheduling recommendation
- Monthly: select 6–10 questions for direct reports, engineering peers, product, SRE, and security according to relationship.
- Quarterly: select 12–24 across all applicable dimensions.
- Annual: include 12–18 stable engineering anchors plus role-specific rotation.
- Customer respondents receive only product-value, transparency, reliability, and relevant innovation variants.