Free 5-Minute Assessment

The Dead Air Self-Assessment

Find out where your team's development flow is silently bleeding time — and what to do about it.

23 questions. Your result maps against DORA benchmarks, identifies your top 3 bottleneck patterns, and gives you a tier-matched next step you can act on this sprint.

First name

Work email

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About you

A few quick questions first

These help us tailor your result. None of these are scored.

What's your role?

Engineering Manager Director / Senior Manager of Engineering VP Engineering / CTO Tech Lead / Staff Engineer Other

How many engineers report into you (directly or indirectly)?

What's the single biggest pressure you're feeling right now?

We're shipping too slowly and leadership has noticed AI tools haven't delivered the speed-up we expected Burnout / morale is suffering I can't prove our value to the business Quality and speed feel like a tradeoff

Please answer all three questions to continue.

Dimension A — Questions 1–5 of 20

Measurement & Visibility

Whether your team can see its own performance. A team that can't see its bottleneck cannot remove it. Low scores here are the strongest predictor of managing by vibes.

Q1. Do you currently track Change Lead Time (commit → production) for your team?

Yes — visible to the team in real time or weekly Yes — reviewed monthly Sometimes — ad-hoc when something feels off Rarely — I could pull it but don't No — we don't measure this

Q2. Do you track Deployment Frequency?

Multiple times per day, automatically Daily or several times per week Weekly or bi-weekly Monthly or per release cycle We don't track this

Q3. Do you know your team's Change Failure Rate (% of deploys that cause incidents/rollbacks)?

Yes — trended over time and improving Yes — we have a baseline Rough sense, no number I could guess but it's not measured No idea

Q4. Do you know your Mean Time to Restore (MTTR) when a deploy fails?

Q5. Do you track Deployment Rework Rate — the share of deploys that are unplanned and triggered by a production incident (hotfixes, rollbacks, follow-up fixes)?

Yes — trended over time and improving Yes — we have a baseline Rough sense, no number I could reconstruct it from incident logs but don't No — we don't distinguish planned vs. rework deploys

Please answer all 5 questions to continue.

Dimension B — Questions 6–10 of 20

Flow & PR Process

Where most modern teams lose the most time. PR review queues, oversized changes, and unclear handoffs create silent waiting that doesn't show up in any standup.

Q6. On average, how long does a PR sit waiting for its first meaningful review?

Q7. What percentage of your PRs are over 500 lines of code?

Q8. How often do PRs sit stale (no activity for 3+ days)?

Almost never Occasionally Weekly Multiple times per week Constantly — we have a backlog of stale PRs

Q9. Is there a clear, documented PR review SLA?

Yes — documented and consistently followed Yes — documented but inconsistently followed Informal norm, not written down No — reviews happen when they happen PR review is a constant negotiation

Q10. Can engineers merge and deploy without a chain of approvals from leads or managers?

Routinely — trust is built into the system Yes for trusted engineers Sometimes, depending on the change Rarely — most things need lead approval Never — every merge is gated

Please answer all 5 questions to continue.

Dimension C — Questions 11–15 of 20

CI/CD & Deployment

The path from merge to production. Brittle pipelines, manual deploy steps, and a high share of unplanned rework deploys create Dead Air and the low-grade dread that erodes engineering morale.

Q11. How often does your CI/CD pipeline fail for transient reasons (flaky tests, infrastructure)?

Q12. How confident are you in your deploy process?

Fully automated and trusted — I don't think about it Automated but watched closely Semi-automated with manual checkpoints Manual and risky — we hold our breath Honestly terrifying

Q13. When a deploy fails, how long does it typically take to recover?

Q14. What percentage of deploys require manual steps (config tweaks, scripts, click-ops)?

Q15. Roughly what share of your deploys in the last month were unplanned — hotfixes, rollbacks, or follow-up fixes after an incident?

Under 5% — nearly everything we ship is planned 5–10% 10–20% 20–35% Over 35%, or we don't know

Please answer all 5 questions to continue.

Dimension D — Questions 16–20 of 20

Planning & Dependencies

The Dead Air that exists before code is even written. Ambiguous specs, dependency waits, and meeting overhead are often invisible to leadership but enormous to the team.

Q16. What percentage of sprint work typically rolls over to the next sprint?

Q17. How often do tickets get blocked because the spec is ambiguous?

Rarely — specs are tight before work starts Occasionally Weekly Multiple times per week Constantly — it's our biggest source of rework

Q18. Do you have a working process for making decisions asynchronously?

Yes — documented and used by default Yes — documented but not always followed Informal — sometimes async, sometimes a meeting Most decisions need a meeting Decisions only happen in meetings

Q19. Once code is complete, how many days does QA / review / approval typically add before it ships?

Q20. Roughly what percentage of your engineers' time is spent in meetings?

Please answer all 5 questions to continue.

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/ 100

Your dimension breakdown

A. Measurement & Visibility—

B. Flow & PR Process—

C. CI/CD & Deployment—

D. Planning & Dependencies—

Your top 3 Dead Air patterns

The three biggest sources of silent waiting inside your team's workflow right now.

Your next step

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Questions? Email Stuart directly.

The Dead Air Self-Assessment

A few quick questions first

Measurement & Visibility

Flow & PR Process

CI/CD & Deployment

Planning & Dependencies

Your top 3 Dead Air patterns

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