Forward Impact Engineering

Tell Whether Culture Investments Are Working

You need to determine whether specific organizational investments -- a mentorship program, a tooling rollout, a process change -- moved the numbers before the next budget review asks for evidence.

Prerequisites

Complete Demonstrate Engineering Progress first. This page assumes you have a working Landmark setup with health views, snapshot data, and at least two GetDX snapshots spanning the period of your investment.

List active and completed initiatives

Start by confirming which investments Landmark is tracking. Initiatives are organizational programs linked to a target driver in your engineering standard. 

npx fit-landmark initiative list --manager alice@example.com

  Initiatives

    Code Review Standards     65%   active     2025-09-30
    Runbook Coverage          100%  completed  2025-06-30
    Mentorship Pilot          40%   active     2025-12-31

Each row shows the initiative name, completion percentage, status, and due date. If the output is empty, your GetDX data does not include initiative records -- check with whoever administers your GetDX account.

Check the driver trend for a specific investment

Before looking at initiative-level impact, see whether the target driver is trending in the right direction. Each initiative targets a driver from your drivers.yaml -- for example, a code review program targets quality and a runbook effort targets reliability.

Track the driver across all available snapshots:

npx fit-landmark snapshot trend --item reliability --manager alice@example.com

  Trend for reliability

    2025-03-15       65
    2025-06-14       71
    2025-09-13       74

A rising trend does not prove the investment caused the change, but a flat or declining trend after a completed initiative is a strong signal that the investment did not produce the expected outcome.

Replace reliability with the driver ID your investment targets. Run npx fit-landmark snapshot list to see available snapshot dates.

Compare a snapshot against benchmarks

A trend shows direction; a comparison shows position. Check how the team's current score for the target driver sits relative to organizational benchmarks: 

npx fit-landmark snapshot compare --snapshot NzE4MmRk --manager alice@example.com

  Snapshot NzE4MmRk

    Driver          Score   vs_prev  vs_org  vs_50th  vs_75th  vs_90th
    quality           78    +6       +5      +8       -2       -10
    reliability       71    +6       +3      +3       -5       -13
    cognitive_load    82    +1       +10     +10      +1       -8

Use the snapshot ID from npx fit-landmark snapshot list. The vs_prev column shows movement since the last snapshot -- the most direct measure of recent change. The vs_org and percentile columns place that change in context: a +6 that still sits below the 75th percentile means the investment is working but the team has not caught up yet.

Measure initiative impact on driver scores

For completed initiatives, Landmark correlates the completion date with before-and-after driver scores from the bounding snapshots: 

npx fit-landmark initiative impact --manager alice@example.com

  Completed initiatives — outcome correlation

    "Runbook Coverage" (completed 2025-06-30)
      Target driver: reliability
      Score before: 65
      Score after:  71
      Change: +6 percentile points

    "Onboarding Revamp" (completed 2025-04-15)
      Target driver: cognitive_load
      Score before: 79
      Score after:  82
      Change: +3 percentile points

The output pairs each completed initiative with the driver score from the snapshot immediately before completion and the snapshot immediately after. A positive delta suggests the investment correlated with improvement; a zero or negative delta prompts a deeper look.

Two caveats to keep in mind when presenting this data:

  • Correlation, not causation. Other changes may have contributed to the score movement. Use voice data (see below) to add qualitative context.
  • Snapshot timing matters. If the initiative completed between two snapshots that are far apart, other factors had time to influence the score.

Add qualitative context with engineer voice

Numbers show direction; the team's own words explain why. Surface comments related to the investment's target area to ground the quantitative data in lived experience: 

npx fit-landmark voice --manager alice@example.com

  Voice: Alice Smith's team (latest snapshot)

    incident    3 comments
      "On-call handoffs are still rough"
      "Runbook coverage is improving but gaps remain"
      "Incident review meetings have been helpful"

    planning    2 comments
      "Sprint planning feels more realistic this quarter"
      "Design docs are getting better but still inconsistent"

Look for comments that name the investment directly or describe its effects. Three comments about runbook improvements alongside a +6 reliability delta tells a more convincing story than either data point alone.

Verify

The assessment is complete when you can answer three questions with data:

  1. Is the target driver trending in the right direction? npx fit-landmark snapshot trend --item <driver> --manager <email> shows a rising score across the snapshots that span your investment period.

  2. Did completed initiatives correlate with score changes? npx fit-landmark initiative impact --manager <email> shows a positive delta for each completed initiative. Initiatives still in progress show no impact data -- that is expected.

  3. Do engineer comments support the quantitative signal? npx fit-landmark voice --manager <email> surfaces comments that reference the investment area, adding context that pure numbers cannot provide.

If all three signals align -- rising trend, positive delta, supportive comments -- you have evidence that the investment is working. If they diverge, the data gives you a specific starting point for investigating why.