Operational Decisions
19 decisions
Work intake must flow through managers, not directly to engineers
Jan 14, 2026 · operational · medium85% confidence
Established new process where small customer requests go to Engineering Managers (Justin, Chris W.) for approval. EMs will attend bi-weekly CECA board review to ensure they are in the loop on incoming work.
People: Justin Haynes, Chris Wolford, Brady Dibble, Nathan Blackham
Marketing ICP Validation - Collaborative Research Approach
Jan 12, 2026 · operational · medium82% confidence
Pushed for marketing to validate ICPs with real data rather than just executing on what was decided in the planning room. Established that ICPs are hypotheses to test, not fixed targets, and Lindsay has permission to explore outside defined ICPs if data warrants.
People: Lindsay Aamodt, Greg Kurtzer
H1 Planning Framework - 3-Lane Model
Jan 12, 2026 · operational · high85% confidence
Pushed for the team to focus on ICPs, goals, and milestones rather than getting lost in metrics and mid-level tactics. Established a 3-lane framework (GTM, Value Drivers, Engineering) to align all work.
People: Chris Baek, Kelly Hall, Max Spevack, Greg Kurtzer
H1 Planning Framework - 3-Lane Model
Jan 12, 2026 · operational · medium72% confidence
Introduced a new 3-lane planning model to address GTM and Engineering misalignment. Top Lane (GTM): marketing campaigns, messaging. Middle Lane (Value Drivers): the why - market state change, ICP, business significance. Bottom Lane (Engineering): deliverables driven by Value Drivers.
People: Nathan Blackham, Justin Haynes, Brady Dibble, Chris Wolford, Jonathon Anderson, Brian Dawson, Kelly Wall, Chris Baek
Verify Justin Offered Bounty Work Broadly
Jan 11, 2026 · operational · medium75% confidence
Investigating whether Justin followed direction to offer bounty work opportunities to everyone. Greg believes it was not offered to Westley. Peter committed to verify this week.
People: Justin Haynes, Westley, Greg Kurtzer
Ownership Definition Clarification Commitment
Jan 11, 2026 · operational · high85% confidence
Committed to working with direct reports to create a clear, shared definition of Ownership and distribute it to all of engineering within a couple of days.
People: Nathan Blackham, Engineering direct reports
Commitment to Present Engineering-to-GTM Messaging Framework
Jan 2, 2026 · operational · high85% confidence
Committed to presenting a framework next week that ties engineering work to changes in market state and corresponding go-to-market messaging. Triggered by Fuzzball Service Endpoints press release that was 98% HPC-focused, missing the critical AI angle despite AI being the strategic priority.
People: Greg Kurtzer, Bjorn Hovland, Jonathan, Lindsay
Build Culture That Moves With Ambiguity
Dec 31, 2025 · operational · medium85% confidence
Committed to teaching the org to start moving with imperfect information rather than over-designing before committing. Will provide cover from Bjorn holding teams accountable for early SWAG estimates, enabling faster iteration and learning.
People: Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Alex
Bounty Program Design: Open Incentives Over Prescribed Work
Dec 31, 2025 · operational · medium88% confidence
Established that bounties at CIQ should be open to all engineers, not targeted at specific individuals. Rejected Bjorn approach of incentivizing Jesus and Alex specifically to work over holidays on Portal. Bounties should be available for anyone to claim if they want to accelerate delivery.
People: Justin Haynes, Bjorn Hovland, Alex, Jesus, Wesley Kurtzer
Bounty Program Design Principles
Dec 31, 2025 · operational · low · engineering90% confidence
Outlined design principles for bounty program: transparency in logging, substantial compensation for well-scoped work, quick delivery incentives.
People: Justin Haynes
NARF Monday Deadline Set
Dec 31, 2025 · operational · high80% confidence
Set hard deadline for Trinity to fix CPackage bug by Monday morning. If not delivered, Max and David Gomez will take over NARF development.
People: Max Spevack, Trinity Quirk, David Gomez
Product-Engineering Quick Estimation Process
Dec 29, 2025 · operational · medium82% confidence
Articulated position on providing quick, low-confidence estimates for Product prioritization. Engineering should provide 20% confidence SWAGs on demand so Product can do early prioritization - these are not commitments engineering can be held to. Distinguished between committing to work without a design (bad) vs providing a quick guess marked as such (good).
People: Justin Haynes, Max Spevack, Bjorn Hovland, Brady Dibble
NARF Launch as Forcing Function
Dec 29, 2025 · operational · high85% confidence
Decided to use NARF automation launch as a forcing function to drive adoption. Max will launch NARF for simple backports by Friday, generating MRs for human approval. Nathan team required to review all generated MRs by end of next week. Peter to meet with Nathan tomorrow to mandate CVE remediation as top priority.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Jeff Uphoff, Trinity, Profim
AI Policy Governance Approach
Dec 28, 2025 · operational · medium74% confidence
Agreed to collaborative governance approach for AI policy: Peter, Nathan, and Max will present AI exploration findings to the AI committee weekly, ensuring engineering innovation feeds into policy development.
People: Stephen Moody, Nathan Blackham, Max Spevack
Neil Unemployment Appeal - Low-Effort Approach
Dec 24, 2025 · operational · low68% confidence
Decided on low-effort, financially expedient approach to Neil unemployment appeal rather than aggressive fight.
People: Neil, Bjorn Hovland, Mariah Rippee, Greg Kurtzer
Engineering Blockers - Immediate Escalation Required
Dec 24, 2025 · operational · medium72% confidence
Established that engineering blockers (being stumped) must be escalated to Peter immediately. Product should not bail out engineering by providing solutions (like YAML files with business logic).
People: Brady Dibble, Brian Dawson
ProServe Work Prioritization Process
Dec 24, 2025 · operational · medium75% confidence
Established new process for handling professional services work: ProServe work will be prioritized against existing roadmap, not by dropping in-flight work. Product (Brady) owns prioritization decision, Engineering determines timing based on capacity.
People: Brady Dibble, Brian Dawson, Dave Dickerson, Ramesh, Art
Championing AI Butler Adoption Internally
Dec 19, 2025 · operational · medium71% confidence
Shared detailed Slack MCP setup instructions with team members. Hosted/recorded AI Dashboard session demonstrating Butler setup. Personally using and advocating for meeting prep automation.
People: Max Spevack, Nathan Blackham, Steve Wallace, Jason Scott, Brian Dawson
Championing AI Butler Internal Adoption
Dec 19, 2025 · operational · medium72% confidence
Hosted and recorded the AI Dashboard/Butler setup session to drive internal adoption of Claude-based personal productivity tools across CIQ. Shared personal use case of creating meeting prep notes from Slack/email/docs.
People: Nathan Blackham, Max Spevack, Steve Wallace, Jason Scott, Chris Short, Sarah Almaraz, Brian Dawson, Justin Haynes