Case Study — Technology Leadership
Tech Health Scoring
Challenge
A leading security software company's CTO needed a scalable way to see whether engineering teams were actually living up to the company's engineering strategy — measured quarterly, not guessed at once a year — and a defensible basis for setting the next quarter's OKR targets.
Approach
Snowberry designed a Tech Promoter Score (TPS) system — analogous to NPS — where each product team self-assessed quarterly against 8 named engineering strategy dimensions, from "build it well, run it well" to security and architecture choices. Scores were converted to a 0–100 scale per product area and tracked over time.
- Engineering strategy The CTO sets the vision and the strategic pillars engineering should build toward.
- Framework design Snowberry maps scoring criteria to each strategy dimension.
- Team workshops Every product team meets quarterly to self-assess against the framework.
- Scoring Per-dimension ratings convert into a single 0-100 Tech Promoter Score.
- Aggregate view The CTO gets a cross-team dashboard of scores, trended over time.
- OKR targets Scores set next quarter's technical health targets.
- Repeat The cycle runs again next quarter — CTO-initiated, team-driven.
Results
Quarterly tracking across 7 product areas over 6 quarters produced measurable progress and a shared language for technical quality across the organisation — Forge, for example, rose from 65 to 87.
| Product area | Q4 2024 | Q1 2025 | Q2 2025 | Q3 2025 | Q4 2025 | Q1 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scout | 35 | 46 | 46 | 50 | 55 | 63 |
| Sentry | 19 | 31 | 32 | 37 | 29 | 33 |
| Commons | 28 | 30 | 38 | 38 | 23 | 23 |
| Forge | 65 | 71 | 72 | 74 | 74 | 87 |
| Hive | 18 | 18 | 20 | 51 | 51 | 51 |
| Depot | 44 | 61 | 61 | 61 | 61 | 61 |
| Flow | 99 | 96 | 95 | 97 | 91 | 91 |
| Average | 44 | 50 | 52 | 58 | 55 | 58 |
Anonymised, quarterly Tech Promoter Score data from a real engagement. Company and product names withheld.
Strategy matrix
Latest Tech Promoter Score by product area — Q1 2026
- Scout 63 Medium
- Sentry 33 Low
- Commons 23 Low
- Forge 87 High
- Hive 51 Medium
- Depot 61 Medium
- Flow 91 High
The 8 engineering strategy dimensions behind the score
- Build it well, run it well
- Code quality and operational ownership are one discipline, not two.
- A set of few intentional tools
- Deliberate technology choices over a sprawl of one-off frameworks.
- AWS Native over Cloud Native
- Lean on managed platform primitives instead of reinventing infrastructure.
- Democratize the data
- Data is accessible and usable across teams, not siloed behind one owner.
- Event-driven architecture
- Systems react to events rather than polling or tight coupling.
- Composable building blocks
- Shared, reusable components over bespoke solutions per team.
- Secure
- Security is a design constraint from the start, not a later audit.
- Knowledge level in team
- The team understands the systems it runs, not just the code it wrote.
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