In today's fast-paced and highly competitive digital landscape, the success of a company often hinges on its ability to create and deliver exceptional products. As the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), you hold a pivotal role in shaping the Product Strategy and driving technological innovation. Your expertise and leadership are instrumental in transforming ideas into tangible solutions that not only meet customer needs but also propel the company forward.
Once a product is past the first MVP and is progressing toward Product Market Fit (PMF), the CTO and the Product team must be aligned on a shared product vision and have a well-defined product strategy in place. They collaborate closely to ensure that technology decisions and product initiatives are tightly integrated into this strategy, and support the overall business objectives.
The organization must have a clear understanding of who their customer is and how their product services the customer’s needs. ****Product should have a clearly defined set of customer personas and the Engineering should have a strong solid understanding of which persona new features are being targeted to and why. Additionally, the entire business should have a strong understanding of which features each persona uses most often and why.
By the time a company reaches Level 2, the CTO is highly aware of the product strategy, actively contributing ideas, determining technical feasibility, evaluating emerging technologies, and proposing innovative solutions that can enhance the product's features, performance, and user experience. Your work on bringing more discipline to working in partnership with Product should be well underway by and continues on through Level 10. As your Level increases so does the detail and complexity needed in each of these Product areas.
Download a PDF of the Product Block diagram here:
Product Block - CTO Levels.pdf
Signs that your team is struggling in the collaboration between Engineering and Product are captured below.
Strategy and Objectives
Priority and Plan