I've been in a CTO or similar role for the past 10 years and you are absolutely correct in your model. In addition, another important quality of a CTO is the ability to use their experience as well as technical and business knowledge to make decisions and empower their teams to continually look for opportunities to bring change that will encourage automation where applicable.
You have explained very well all four components that CTO needs to manage, You must also include that he must also have the Knowledgebase about the business domain to be a strategic contributor to the board. He is just not an errand boy of the board but he must understand the core and specialized processes that help the company run BAU. He should proactively think about growth and risk associated with any given situation and build controls and visibility for timely decisions.
Don't mind me... Just a Chief Design Officer passing through... Really rich knowledge (presented bluntly and quickly) that I am applying to my own position 🙏 God bless you!
I think that many of these responsabilities could be handled by a VP of Engineering. It's really hard to focus on the business strategy (the big picture) and manage the day-to-day execution at the same time. Many companies rely on these professionals to help the CTO on the systems architecture, to hire the best team, to keep the team motivated and get the job done.
I think that's true, and that's my current role in VP of engineering. I do 80% of these functions. But I think the key point is organizational scale. At some point the VP would have too many responsibilities in a large organization and it would need to be broken down to several VPs managed by the same CTO
Where I work there is a CTO that has no clue about what happens in the those 4 pillars because he assigned that to someone else. I think it is CTO's responsibility to provide great tools for the team, to make sure the tech stack is not fragmented, to make sure the team is happy with the process of stories from end to end. Most importantly that the team has everything in place to be productive these things are priority. Being in a technical role I would never ever ever give a CTO position to someone who never wrote a line of code and didnt experience the problems engineers have on their day to day work life, the reason I say this is because that leader will not appreciate in a deep level a developers life. If the CTO went through the ladder from Junior developer all the way up to management then this leader will be much more prepared to build a team and give them the tech stack that makes them more productive and they have a great developer experience. If DX is high within the team believe me that team will make the impossible possible.
I think, you can drop “tools” for a “product”. And it would be more “productive”. Tools can be managed by teams who do the actual job themselves at some degree.
Good observation Anton, this model assumes that you're working on some product or service so I left it out. I think Tooling is essential in the early days and the CTO plays a very important role to establish those tools.
I believe CTO should be visionary, should have ability to visualize the upcoming technologies or market requirement and it's driver two years ahead and drive these to withing organisation with all team members with timeline.
This is absolutely true. In our experience as a 'technology enabler', the role between CTOs and CIOs is also becoming ever more blurred due to modern data usage in new technologies. For example, introducing the Cloud to an organisation will offer them new ways of working that have considerations of their own rather than just connectivity for backing data up. CTOs have to have oversight of this, and of what this technology means, as well as sell it to the board and the organisation. Digital Transformation is now a constant philosophy, not a journey from point A to B. Thanks.
Hi. I am starting a role as junior technical officer in a FMCG that expects me to fill the shoes of CTO one day. I am qualified process engineer and would like to know my daily roles
Team: This is not just about hiring, but also org-structure. Who reports to whom to who is accountable for what etc. Without this... the delivery could just breakdown completely. Tools: I feel more than tools, it is the tech process and culture that matters. Do we follow TDD, should we have CI/CD, how much importance is given to cleanup/refactoring, what are the roles & responsibilities of Dev, QA, Product Manager and Project Manager and how do the interface with each other. Once this process and culture is established, one can pick any tool that satisfies the need.
I'm still confused as to the context of your examples. You talk about "owning" the position with four quadrants. I want to know who is in charge of the technical infrastructure of a company. Such as, networking offices, running maintaining software like ERPs and CRM, cyber security, etc. Not all companies are Software/Hardware companies where the product is tech base. I would think there would be a clear distinction between the tech infrastructure of a company and the tech product or tech service that the business provides.
I would say for smaller companies, it would be natural for the CTO to take charge with these decisions. As you grow into a larger org with more enterprise problems, you may have a dedicated role for this, like CIO.
The short answer is absolutely! The longer answer would dig into the experience you have, what drives you and how that all fits into the role of the CTO.
Thanks a million for your extraordinary elaboration 😍 I was looking for the exact defination like you have given. But the question arises from my side that, a person who has not the certificate of engineering ! Can that person dig the position as a CTO? Waiting for the answer😊
It depends on what stage the company is in. At the earlier stage I believe they should be very technical, but it becomes less important the larger the company grows where there will be more VPs/Directors to take care of technical details.
I just sold my shares and the board wants to keep me for 2 more years minimum so I'm switching from COO to CTO. Pretty useful video. I think I've always been more of a CTO than a COO anyway. We'll no longer have a COO.
In my experience, many CTOs operate as COOs, especially in smaller companies. So it's not surprising that you switched between the two. Mostly I'm happy that you've chosen a role and can now stick with it and develop your skills.
@@7CTOs Thanks, I'm 4 months late missed that reply, was just going through my history. I'm striving in my new role. The good thing is I've been in the past a Director of Customer Support, a Sysadmin, and a programmer. So I've full awareness of what my 3 teams are doing. It's a pretty nice role if you know what you're doing. When you manage tech people, guys won't respect you if you're a marketing dude.
Making a few assumptions here, the CTO should manage themselves. The CEO sets the tone and culture through leading the company but inherently trusts their CTO to break down the tasks at hand into smaller doable tasks. The CTO creates and manages a budget and reports back to the CEO on commonly agreed to metrics and performance indicators. Hope this helps!
I've been in a CTO or similar role for the past 10 years and you are absolutely correct in your model. In addition, another important quality of a CTO is the ability to use their experience as well as technical and business knowledge to make decisions and empower their teams to continually look for opportunities to bring change that will encourage automation where applicable.
I love that Leon, and I created this video as the next step in scaling your role: ua-cam.com/video/QRl3QhVBnIU/v-deo.html
You have explained very well all four components that CTO needs to manage, You must also include that he must also have the Knowledgebase about the business domain to be a strategic contributor to the board. He is just not an errand boy of the board but he must understand the core and specialized processes that help the company run BAU. He should proactively think about growth and risk associated with any given situation and build controls and visibility for timely decisions.
Doesn't always need to be a "he". Try saying "he or she", or simply "they".
What is "BAU"?. Thanks.
@@carxl Business As Usual. Basically the every running of the business tasks.
@@leonhenery5410 thank u Leon.
@@KENTOSI oh please, it wasn’t intentional. Relax a bit..
Don't mind me... Just a Chief Design Officer passing through... Really rich knowledge (presented bluntly and quickly) that I am applying to my own position 🙏 God bless you!
Thanks. This was great insights into the role of CTO
Business understanding and having some shares in the company
I think that many of these responsabilities could be handled by a VP of Engineering. It's really hard to focus on the business strategy (the big picture) and manage the day-to-day execution at the same time. Many companies rely on these professionals to help the CTO on the systems architecture, to hire the best team, to keep the team motivated and get the job done.
Totally agree. I made a follow up video that discusses how things change as you start scaling.
I think that's true, and that's my current role in VP of engineering. I do 80% of these functions. But I think the key point is organizational scale. At some point the VP would have too many responsibilities in a large organization and it would need to be broken down to several VPs managed by the same CTO
Where I work there is a CTO that has no clue about what happens in the those 4 pillars because he assigned that to someone else. I think it is CTO's responsibility to provide great tools for the team, to make sure the tech stack is not fragmented, to make sure the team is happy with the process of stories from end to end. Most importantly that the team has everything in place to be productive these things are priority. Being in a technical role I would never ever ever give a CTO position to someone who never wrote a line of code and didnt experience the problems engineers have on their day to day work life, the reason I say this is because that leader will not appreciate in a deep level a developers life. If the CTO went through the ladder from Junior developer all the way up to management then this leader will be much more prepared to build a team and give them the tech stack that makes them more productive and they have a great developer experience. If DX is high within the team believe me that team will make the impossible possible.
great video. thanks
Subscribed!
I think, you can drop “tools” for a “product”. And it would be more “productive”. Tools can be managed by teams who do the actual job themselves at some degree.
Good observation Anton, this model assumes that you're working on some product or service so I left it out. I think Tooling is essential in the early days and the CTO plays a very important role to establish those tools.
I believe CTO should be visionary, should have ability to visualize the upcoming technologies or market requirement and it's driver two years ahead and drive these to withing organisation with all team members with timeline.
This is absolutely true. In our experience as a 'technology enabler', the role between CTOs and CIOs is also becoming ever more blurred due to modern data usage in new technologies. For example, introducing the Cloud to an organisation will offer them new ways of working that have considerations of their own rather than just connectivity for backing data up. CTOs have to have oversight of this, and of what this technology means, as well as sell it to the board and the organisation. Digital Transformation is now a constant philosophy, not a journey from point A to B. Thanks.
Hi. I am starting a role as junior technical officer in a FMCG that expects me to fill the shoes of CTO one day. I am qualified process engineer and would like to know my daily roles
Check out our video on the role of a CTO.
Interesting video... Did you teach yourself to write backwards??
The video can be inverted later on.
@@nethacker91 That is clever, I was wondering how he did that too.
What do you do as a CTO for the tools quadrant if you have already implemented the newest industry tools like ERP systems, etc?
Move on to the CTO Sentinel :)
Team: This is not just about hiring, but also org-structure. Who reports to whom to who is accountable for what etc. Without this... the delivery could just breakdown completely.
Tools: I feel more than tools, it is the tech process and culture that matters. Do we follow TDD, should we have CI/CD, how much importance is given to cleanup/refactoring, what are the roles & responsibilities of Dev, QA, Product Manager and Project Manager and how do the interface with each other. Once this process and culture is established, one can pick any tool that satisfies the need.
Love it.
I'm still confused as to the context of your examples. You talk about "owning" the position with four quadrants. I want to know who is in charge of the technical infrastructure of a company. Such as, networking offices, running maintaining software like ERPs and CRM, cyber security, etc. Not all companies are Software/Hardware companies where the product is tech base. I would think there would be a clear distinction between the tech infrastructure of a company and the tech product or tech service that the business provides.
I would say for smaller companies, it would be natural for the CTO to take charge with these decisions. As you grow into a larger org with more enterprise problems, you may have a dedicated role for this, like CIO.
Thanks for a clear defining of role of CTO
I WANT TO BECOME A CTO, currently on university
Awesome! What would you like to be a CTO of?
CTO OF CAPS LOCK, obviously
your video added valuable knowledge
Can an automobile engineer go for CTO
The short answer is absolutely! The longer answer would dig into the experience you have, what drives you and how that all fits into the role of the CTO.
how to become cto?
Thanks a million for your extraordinary elaboration 😍
I was looking for the exact defination like you have given.
But the question arises from my side that, a person who has not the certificate of engineering !
Can that person dig the position as a CTO?
Waiting for the answer😊
It depends on what stage the company is in. At the earlier stage I believe they should be very technical, but it becomes less important the larger the company grows where there will be more VPs/Directors to take care of technical details.
Brilliant!! thanks a lot.
You're welcome!
I just sold my shares and the board wants to keep me for 2 more years minimum so I'm switching from COO to CTO. Pretty useful video. I think I've always been more of a CTO than a COO anyway. We'll no longer have a COO.
In my experience, many CTOs operate as COOs, especially in smaller companies. So it's not surprising that you switched between the two. Mostly I'm happy that you've chosen a role and can now stick with it and develop your skills.
@@7CTOs Thanks, I'm 4 months late missed that reply, was just going through my history. I'm striving in my new role. The good thing is I've been in the past a Director of Customer Support, a Sysadmin, and a programmer. So I've full awareness of what my 3 teams are doing. It's a pretty nice role if you know what you're doing. When you manage tech people, guys won't respect you if you're a marketing dude.
There is nothing on products ...
In this context all four T's are in service to the product being built.
@@7CTOs ah ha "In service to the product being built."
Should CEO manage all the task which CTO should do? or the CTO manage theirself?
Making a few assumptions here, the CTO should manage themselves. The CEO sets the tone and culture through leading the company but inherently trusts their CTO to break down the tasks at hand into smaller doable tasks. The CTO creates and manages a budget and reports back to the CEO on commonly agreed to metrics and performance indicators. Hope this helps!
7CTOs thank you, this is help me a lot
Your definition looks more like a TL of a team for me.
How so?
Ettiene, nee man. se jou van reg, "De Bruin" soos 'n afrikaner. lol
Hahaha! Uitgevang!
Maar spel eers my naam reg boeta! Seblief man.