Tissa
Jan 12, 2026 - Apr 17, 2026
6
Decisions
0
Active Todos
3
Patterns
Categories
Decisions (6)
Committed CVE categorization + kpatch estimates to Google by Monday
After Tissa agreed no one can answer Madhus blanket questions, committed CIQ to deliver a CVE-type classification table with kpatch coverage estimates by Monday. Reshaping an unanswerable request into a structured, defensible answer by category.
FIPS 6.18 Option 2 Engineering Kickoff
After Manu at Google did not respond to the relationship reset email sent Sunday, Peter escalated the FIPS proposal to Tissa via Kelly. Tissa authorized CIQ to proceed. Peter then directed Nathan to begin engineering work on Option 2 (faster timing path) while awaiting the Atsec contract. Engineering was held in reserve until external confirmations landed to avoid thrashing.
Unified Google Proposal — Present Combined GDC/GCE to Rohan
Aligned Kelly and Bjorn on presenting a unified GDC/GCE proposal to Rohan (Google senior director) instead of negotiating separately. Reframing from pro-serve/ticket model to value-driven partnership with a large fixed annual fee ($8-9M).
Google Partnership Strategy - Build Rapport with Tissa
Decided to shift the Google contract renegotiation strategy from confrontational to collaborative. Peter will personally meet with Tissa (Google) to build rapport and empathy, framing CIQ's financial pain as a shared problem to solve together. Greg will be excluded from this meeting to ensure a non-antagonistic conversation.
Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms
Decided to personally join the Monday lunch meeting with Tissa to lead negotiation on Google scope change. Google was trying to bundle Rocky 8 and 9 into one version (reducing from 8 to 5 versions) and push release next format without updated commercial terms.
Google Scope Change - Hold the Line on Commercial Terms
Google is pushing scope changes that bundle 8 versions into a 5-version contract, omit EOL dates, and include undefined dev streams. This creates scope creep risk and jeopardizes the Extended LTS revenue stream (~$300k/year per product). Decision to personally attend the Monday meeting with Tissa (with Max) to hold the line. Greg will NOT attend to preserve escalation path.
Related Patterns (3)
Executive Sponsorship for Strategic Partnerships
Strategic cross-company initiatives and major client partnerships require executive-level accountability to move at the right pace and ensure proper prioritization.
Small Circle for Sensitive Operations
When executing sensitive strategic operations, keep the circle of informed people as small as possible to prevent leaks that could accelerate hostile action or undermine the initiative.
Protect Engineering Capacity
When external demands threaten to overload engineering capacity, protect capacity by either requiring the demand to come with additional resources, or forcing hard prioritization choices upstream.