In every account I've turned around — a $35M program, $15M in frozen payments, one-month ultimatums — the trouble was visible for quarters before anyone said the word "escalation." The signals were there. Nobody was looking at them.
This is the diagnostic I wish those founders had run early. Answer honestly and you'll see where your customer account and your engineering organization actually stand — and which one is quietly setting up the other to fail.
How it reads
Two scores plotted on one map — account health (a lagging indicator) against engineering health (a leading one). Where the two land tells you whether today's calm is earned, or borrowed.