An engineering tabletop tests whether people can find, contain and fix the problem. An executive tabletop tests whether leaders can decide quickly on customers, communication, spend and legal duties with incomplete information. Use the same scenario, but change the injects and the questions.
Same event, different questions
Take one scenario: a popular dependency is found to be malicious and your build pulled it.
| Topic | Engineering session asks | Executive session asks |
|---|---|---|
| Scope | Which repositories and services? | How many customers might be affected? |
| Containment | Which credentials to revoke first? | Are we willing to pause releases? |
| Communication | What goes in the advisory? | Who speaks to customers, press and regulators? |
| Timeline | How long to rebuild? | What do we tell customers to expect? |
| Cost | Which team works overnight? | Who approves extra spend or outside help? |
| Evidence | Which logs to save? | Who handles legal and insurer notices? |
Designing the engineering version
Use the scripts such as the GitHub Action scenario and keep the room small. Objectives are operational: time to scope, owners named, secrets rotated. Output: a ranked list of technical fixes.
Designing the executive version
Keep it to 45 to 60 minutes with five to eight people.
- Brief in two minutes. Give only what leaders would hear: "engineering believes a dependency was malicious and is checking."
- Inject: pressure. A major customer emails asking whether they are affected.
- Inject: uncertainty. Engineering says scope is unknown for six more hours.
- Inject: outside party. A journalist or a partner asks for comment.
- Inject: decision. Engineering asks for permission to freeze deployments.
Questions to ask:
- Who is the single decision maker, and who is the backup?
- What is the threshold for telling customers before facts are complete?
- What can we truthfully say today?
- Who checks the legal and contractual duties? Name the person, not a department.
Our leadership briefing agenda and one page incident summary match this format.
Run them in sequence
Run the engineering session first, then give executives a summary of its real findings. Leaders then practise decisions against realistic constraints, such as "scope takes six hours," instead of imaginary ones. Finally, hold a short joint session to align on who calls what.
Pitfalls
- Executives asked to do technical work, which wastes their time.
- Engineers listening in, which can make leaders defer to them instead of deciding.
- No link between the two sessions, so findings never meet.
Record both in the same after-action format, with a column for which group owns each action.
Try it yourself
Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen. See how reachability narrows a long list to what matters, the kind of summary an executive session needs from engineering.
Safeguard provides reachability analysis, SBOM scanning and a free scan for building that technical summary.
Quick check
Should the CEO attend the engineering tabletop?
Usually not. Their time is better spent in a session built for decisions, using findings from the engineering run.
How much technical detail do executives need?
Enough to decide: what is known, what is not, how long to find out, and what the options cost. Leave commands and tooling out.
Last reviewed: 19 October 2026.
