Engineering governance · Template 2

Weekly Engineering
Leadership Review

A decision-focused 60-minute review of portfolio changes, material risks, cross-team dependencies and leadership interventions. Weekly reports are read beforehand, not aloud in the meeting.

60mTotal meeting time

Suggested rule: discuss exceptions and decisions; keep routine status updates asynchronous.

Agenda progress0 of 5 sessions completed
10m00–10

01 · Portfolio changes

What has materially changed since last week?

  • Which commitments or forecasts have shifted?
  • What new risks or opportunities need leadership attention?
  • What has changed in overall portfolio confidence?
Align
15m10–25

02 · Exceptions and material risks

Focus on issues that threaten outcomes, customers or controls.

  • Critical incidents and reliability concerns
  • Security findings or authorised exceptions
  • Threatened milestones and deteriorating engineering health
  • Mitigation, accountable owner and target date
Assess
15m25–40

03 · Cross-team dependencies

Resolve bottlenecks that individual teams cannot solve alone.

  • Ownership conflicts and unresolved dependencies
  • Platform bottlenecks and shared capacity constraints
  • Architecture decisions requiring alignment
  • Agreed owner and date for each resolution
Resolve
15m40–55

04 · Decisions and interventions

Make the decisions needed to move forward.

  • Agree trade-offs across scope, time, quality and capacity
  • Approve exceptions within delegated authority
  • Assign leadership support to unblock delivery
  • Record the decision, rationale and accountable owner
Decide
5m55–60

05 · Commitments and closure

Leave with clear decisions, ownership and deadlines.

  • Confirm decisions and action owners
  • Validate deadlines and expected outcomes
  • Identify items requiring executive escalation
Commit

Decision log

Capture decisions made during the review, including rationale and ownership.

DecisionRationale / impactDecision ownerDate

Record the decision, not just the discussion. Note any conditions or follow-up required.

Action register

Track follow-through across teams and leadership.

Action / outcomeAccountable ownerDue dateStatus

Every action should have one accountable owner, a due date and a clear outcome.

Meeting close-out

Use the final five minutes to confirm the following.