Welcome to CTO Levels! The framework designed to help your company understand the level your tech organization needs to operate at. This framework was designed by @Etienne de Bruin with the help of @Kathy Keating and @Scott Graves

About Us

Learn more about the story behind CTO Levels.

Terms of Use

You are free to apply CTO Levels within your organization! But check out the licenses.

FAQ

Head over here if all you have is questions!

This page is constantly being updated by the CTO Levels Working Group. If you have any questions or concerns, please email us at [email protected].

<aside> 💡 Subscribe to the CTO Levels Newsletter over at Substack.

(we write about updates to the CTO Levels framework and when we add new modules and content)

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Getting Started

The premise behind CTO Levels is very simple. Go grab two numbers:

1. the team size that reports up into the CTO (or similar executive position)
2. the budget or expense dedicated to that team.

Now take a look at this grid and see if you can find your target level!

What Level are you?

Let’s say you have 5 full time developers, 2 QA engineers, 1 support person and one product manager that all report to you as the CTO. This would put you at 9 people and therefore your company would be at a Level 3.

Check out all the levels here:

Levels

How we determine each Level’s Blocks