---
name: vpe-review
description: /cs:vpe-review <plan> — Throughput-first VP of Engineering interrogation of any plan that touches delivery, eng hiring, team structure, or production discipline.
---

# /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-review` — 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