I can pretty much be sure that the last time you wanted your haircut, you did not use the hairdresser that you keep at home in the corner. If you are like me, you cannot afford the luxury of a stay at home stylist and go and get your hair cut at the hairdresser’s in town.
Having a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) sat in the corner of your office waiting for you to call on his or her services could equally be a luxury you cannot afford.
The Importance of the CTO
For anyone like me, the act of going to the hairdresser’s is a necessity. I need to use their services every 6 weeks to address the wild mop that adorns my head.
So it is with a CTO. For any tech business, the CTO is a vital role within the company. CTOs are responsible for a wide range of technology processes within your business, including:
- Product vision
- Roadmap planning
- Board presentations
- Requirements definition
- Architectural design
- Technical debt
- Development
- Quality Assurance
- Deployment
It can be seen from the list of responsibilities that the CTO is key to any tech-based business.
Like the term full-stack developer refers to a developer who can work on any part of the solution, a full-stack CTO can actually help with any part of the business that is impacted by technology. This includes:
- Advise on budgets
- Business plans
- Marketing
- Funding strategies
- Team recruitment and motivation
- Training
- Hands-on Development
If a business has access to a full-stack CTO, they have access to a broad range of skills and experience that can help the business overall, not just in the technical space.
Exploring a Tech Start-up
The CTO gets involved from the very start. After you have an idea, you need to explore the possible solutions and their feasibility. The CTO works with you to flesh out your idea and turn it into a solution.
Based on the user stories that are captured and any solution constraints, the CTO will devise a possible architecture and create an initial plan for developing a solution.
If the product is significantly complex, a Proof of Concept (PoC) may need to be constructed to determine if it is feasible to build it. The CTO can help determine if a PoC is required and how it might be carried out.
Building the Product
Once it has been decided that a product is to be built, it is the CTO can create the product delivery plan, including roadmap, stages of delivery, release plan and sprint planning.
Where compromises need to be made, such as feature set versus quality, technical debt versus progress and functionality versus timeline, your CTO can assist with the decisions to be made. Your aim at this stage is to build the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that your customers would agree is useful.
Enhancing the Product
Your product is launched and is generating revenue. Even at this stage, the CTO role is criticcal to your business.
Once the product is in front of users, the feedback cycle begins. No matter how good your product is, users will always have something to say. It could be improvements, defects, extensions, opinions, misunderstandings or just some left-wing idea.
Sorting the wheat from the chaff can be difficult. With limited resources, prioritisation can become more challenging.
Your CTO will be able to chart a course through these decisions and can advise on what is significant from a strategic or tactical perspective and what can be deprioritised.
Overall, whether you are exploring an idea, building an MVP or enhancing an existing product, the role of the CTO is vital to your business.
By Jim Reardan on Unspash.com
On-Demand CTOs
For an established tech business, it is easy to justify a full time CTO. The role will generally encompass the management of the technology team as well as the day-to-day tactical decision making.
For tech start-ups, however, things are very different.
For Start-ups
For an established tech business, it is easy to justify a full time CTO. The role will generally encompass the management of the technology team as well as the day-to-day tactical decision making.
For tech start-ups, however, things are very different.
As the founder of a start-up, your level of technical skills may vary from zero to hero. If you are a technology hero, then you are probably performing the role of the CTO yourself but if you are closer to zero, you may be lost, not knowing what to do.
No matter which end you find yourself at, you will soon find out that your focus will need to be split between working in the business as a CTO and working on the business as the CEO. You will soon come round to the realisation that you need to recruit a CTO but cannot justify a full-time role.
Typically, what happens is the founder enlists the help of one or two developers. These may be volunteers or paid developers. This allows you to focus on the business but, ironically, as you add more people to the team, the less time you have as you need to coordinate and manage their work.
You may be tempted to give one of your developers the CTO responsibilities but then you find that the development output then drops.
Its times like this that you need to consider the use of an On-Demand CTO, also referred to as CTO as a Service. On Demand CTOs can provide that CTO support without having to commit to the cost of a fulltime CTO.
For Established Businesses
Even as your business grows, you may have need for On-Demand CTO services.
CTO Recruitment
Once revenue begins to flow, you will find yourself needing to recruit a full time CTO. If you have ever been involved with recruitment, you will know that this can be a huge drain on your time and can take significant effort to find the right person.
Enter the On-Demand CTO.
You can utilise the skills and experience of an On-Demand CTO in two ways:
- Have them assist with the recruitment process itself
- Have them fill in as the CTO whilst you find the right person
This can be a natural extension to the use of the On-Demand CTO you used during your Explore and Build phases.
Assisting your Existing CTO
Once you have found and recruited your CTO, you may still have use of on-demand CTO services:
- Acting as a mentor to your CTO
- Providing strategic advice
- Facilitating product roadmap workshops
- Defining and starting strategic projects
- Assisting with merger and acquisition and IPO due diligence
Being able to call on a CTO that you know and trust and that knows you and your business, allows you to get quickly get assistance when you need it.
Obtaining On-demand CTO Services
As we have seen, the CTO role is critical to any tech-based business. Whilst the right person can see your business go from success to success, the wrong one can seriously derail it.
As a tech-based founder, handing over the keys to the castle can also be difficult. You have certain ways in which you want to work, strong opinions on how the product should be built and a desire to stay in control.
Whether you are a non-technical founder who is unsure what to do next or a technical founder who knows exactly what to do next but needs additional assistance, finding the right On-Demand CTO can be daunting and something you may put off until later.
Actually, this is not the best strategy. Getting the CTO in early can ensure that the relationship builds as the product does. There is less time covering old ground and revisiting decisions.
When you are selecting an On-Demand CTO to assist you, look for the following:
- Someone who is driven by your success, not theirs
- Someone who is willing to work at the top of the stack (strategy) as well as at the bottom (hands-on development)
- Someone who gets what you are trying to do and believes it is viable
- Someone you trust
Finding the right person who ticks all of these boxes may seem impossible.
Engage Slowly
At Requillion Solutions we recommend that you initially start by engaging an On-Demand CTO to help with small, specific issues you are facing. Get to know each other and see if you are compatible. Once you are comfortable with each other and as trust builds, extend the size and significance of the engagement. It should seem natural to have the CTO as a member of your team.
Returns on Your Investment
Once you have decided that an on-demand CTO can help you with your business, engaging one can should provide a good return on investment. For this to happen, you want to remain in control with no surprises.
For all businesses, but especially start-ups, cashflow is key. The whilst the nature of on-demand services is that you pay for what you use, you can suffer bill shock when it comes time to pay.
We realise that this is the case and that charging for every minute of every hour you spend on the phone seeking answers or clarifications can limit the benefit you receive. Ideally, your On-Demand CTO services should have fixed and affordable fees for dealing with the small stuff like questions and clarifications. As your team grows, these fees should expand to cover other foreseeable activities, such as managing your roadmaps, sprints and development teams.
As well as the fixed fees, you should look for which activities are chargeable by a unit rate, such as architectural design and development. Check to make sure that the unit rate is competitive.
Finally, you should check to see what value the CTO can bring, such as architectural frameworks and product templates. These will provide your business a boost early on.
Don’t Keep a CTO in the Office, Hire One
I have described how the CTO role is vital to a tech business and all the business activities that a full-stack CTO may be involved in from roadmap strategy all the way through to hands-on development.
Especially in the early days of your business, an On-Demand CTO can be an invaluable asset to have on hand. Without the cost of a full-time CTO, you can leverage the skills and experience of an On-Demand CTO to obtain the help you need, whether you are a non-technical founder exploring an idea or if you are a fully established business looking to enhance your existing product.
If you would like to know more about how an On-Demand CTO service would work in your circumstance, please contact me at martin.hodges@requillion-solutions.com.