Board of Directors: Engineering Review Questions
A Series-B board presentation went sideways in 2023 when a director — former GitHub VPE — asked the CTO three questions in a row she hadn't prepared for. She knew deployment frequency and team size. She didn't know median lead time, hiring velocity against plan, or the engineering payroll as a share of operating burn. The board didn't defund engineering, but they added a quarterly engineering review with a different CTO on the call. The meeting became a test the team passed but the CTO didn't.
Boards are harder to prepare for than investors because they have more context and less patience. This is a question list — what a working board actually asks, what the CTO should bring without being asked, and the red flags an experienced director spots in 15 minutes. We collected it from conversations with CTOs who have presented successfully, CTOs who haven't, and two board directors who sit on engineering-heavy portfolios.