Who is responsible for the ultimate success of a business aka Revenue/Profits? This becomes an even tougher question in today's world when everything is driven by technology. For a technology company, this becomes even more critical.
To understand this problem easier let us consider the following scenarios when something goes wrong in the company.
- A deal didn't come through
- The product download did not meet the expected count
- The usage of the application is very slow
- The developed product did not delight the customer
- As an industry, the IT industry is still very immature compared to other industries like the army, manufacturing, retail, medicine etc
- The role of a CTO in a services company is very different from the role of a CTO in a product company.
- ?Many who work in technology hands-on 10 focus on accumulating in-depth knowledge about technology or a few technologies. This makes them very weak in their ability to apply this knowledge to solve a real-world business problem which is a key aspect of architecture thinking.
- A CTO needs to play a strategic role, this means that the Person needs to answer the questions of where the company or the organization is going to head with respect to technology in a longer horizon of 2 to 3 years. In fact, they should struggle to answer immediate practical problems and their solutions.
- There is an attitude to think that a particular technology if implemented will solve a business problem, this is actually a pitfall. Many companies have seen one technology after one technology getting implemented but the business problem still remains.
- When failure happens who is actually responsible for it? is it the chief technology officer or the senior engineer or the architect?
- ?It will be hard for someone who doesn't enjoy releasing value or making money to play the role of a CTO.
- It will be extremely hard for someone who doesn't enjoy reading algorithms and formulas and functions to play the role of a distinguished engineer.
- It will be extremely hard for someone who does not enjoy the complexities and variations that exists between people and systems and trying to make this fix a jigsaw puzzle to play the role of a distinguished architect.
- If the discussion happens for a technology solution around cost then the value that is being delivered is not significant by the technology or the product.
A preliminary definition of roles I made, please comment on it.
The full link to the video is over here.
