VP of Engineering Advisor
Ongoing advice for a VP of Engineering: hiring funnel math, team and manager structure, on-call, delivery commitments, board reporting.
Before & after
Same prompt, same agent — the only difference is the skill.
Declining velocity can stem from many causes. You might want to assess team capacity, check if there are blocking dependencies, review recent hiring changes, or examine whether priorities have shifted. Some teams experience slowdowns due to technical debt, others due to scope creep or unclear requirements. It's important to understand what changed and when. I'd recommend running a retrospective to gather team feedback. Have you noticed any pattern in which types of work got slower?
DELIVERY DIAGNOSIS FRAMEWORK: 30% velocity drop DORA METRICS BASELINE (past 4 sprints): Cycle time increased 68%, deployment frequency halved (weekly to biweekly), lead time now 11 days (was 6). Change failure rate: 23% (target: under 10%). BOTTLENECK RANK-ORDER: 1. CODE REVIEW BACKLOG (PRIMARY): Pull requests pile up 3-5 days. Senior engineers blocked on context-switching. Action: rotate reviewer pairs, split large PRs into 4-hour-max reviews. 2. TEST INFRASTRUCTURE (SECONDARY): CI/CD test suite now 47 minutes (was 18). Flaky tests eat 8% of pipeline time. Action: parallelize 12 test jobs, stub external API calls. 3. SCOPE CREEP: Average story size increased 40% (13 to 18 points). Refinement sessions not vetting edge cases. Action: enforce 8-point max per sprint. NON-FACTORS (confirmed): Headcount stable. No recent platform migrations. Incident rate flat. RECOMMENDED 90-DAY ROADMAP: Week 1-2: Fix test parallelization (immediate 25-min saving). Week 3-4: Review process redesign + pairing. Week 5-6: Scope discipline in backlog refinement. Rebaseline DORA metrics weekly. EXPECTED OUTCOME: Restore to 80% of baseline velocity by sprint 12.
About this skill
Advice for whoever runs engineering as an organization, anchored to your headcount, stage, and numbers rather than generic leadership tips.
What it does
- Works the hiring funnel backward and budgets interview load and ramp time
- Advises on team size, manager spans, and when to split the tech-lead-manager role
- Sets up on-call and postmortem discipline that holds
- Frames delivery commitments as ranges with real capacity
- Handles people questions conversation-first
What you get
Short answers with the number that would change them, a 90-day plan for new VPs of Engineering, and one priority for the next 30 days.
Best for
New or first-time VPs of Engineering and engineering leaders at 15-150 engineers.
SKILL.md preview
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name: vpe-advisor
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