6 Slides R&D Leaders Should Show at Board Meetings

Board and executive leaders are fluent in financials and funnel metrics – but when it comes to engineering, they often struggle to know what “good” looks like. That’s where Jellyfish’s board-ready R&D template comes in.

Created with insights from Adam Ferrari – a Jellyfish advisor and former Engineering SVP, EVP and CTO – this template helps you translate engineering performance into a story your board will understand and support, now with with a new AI Impact template included.

Whether you’re preparing for your next quarterly meeting or building an ongoing reporting rhythm, you can communicate engineering’s strategic value, demonstrate ROI, and earn board buy-in – without spending hours starting from scratch.

What’s Inside: 6 Slides Every R&D Leader Needs

1. R&D Investment Distribution: Show how your organization allocates resources – growth vs. retention, strategic initiatives vs. maintenance – and how that supports your product and business strategy.
   
   
2. Deliverables: Highlight major shipped and upcoming roadmap items, focusing on investments that move the needle.
   
   
3. Delivery & Operations: Demonstrate organizational efficiency using industry-standard productivity benchmarks like DORA metrics.
   
   
4. Quality: Present clear, contextual quality indicators – change failure rate, uptime, MTTR – to build board confidence in your team’s reliability.
   
   
5. People: Showcase your most important asset: talent. Include headcount trends, hiring progress, org structure, and developer experience metrics.

6. AI Impact (New!): Boards expect to see measurable results from AI adoption. Capture adoption rates, engineering productivity gains, and business outcomes with the Jellyfish AI Impact Framework baked into the template