CIO vs CTO: Who’s in Charge of IT Management? Prey Blog

It’s more likely the case that your CTO is not explaining things to you in a way that you can easily understand – which of course foments distrust. Remember – it’s the CTO’s job as an executive to understand and speak the language of business – not your job to understand technology and the language of engineers. Remember that it is your CTO’s job to be able to translate technical terms and initiatives into terms the remainder of the business can understand. Put simply, every initiative should be evaluated from the lens of the Statement of Cash Flow, Income Statement and Balance Sheet. If your CTO struggles with this, consider sending her to an executive MBA program or finance bootcamp to help bolster their understanding of business. This helps the CEO offload some key conversations and helps to build trust between the leadership team and the board.

A CTO is a highly experienced technical person who usually has more than 15 years of experience building solutions to improve business processes, increase productivity, and reduce costs. In a mid-to-large-sized organization, it’s not rare to have both a director of engineering and a VP of engineering. As is the case, the director of engineering will actually report to the VP while acting as a liaison between technical management and engineering teams. The role of chief technology officer is the highest position within the technology and engineering departments.

Take Advantage Of Professional CTO Dashboards & Reports

If a small startup CTO works well, the company may grow quickly and the role of CTO will change significantly. A CTO usually reports directly to the Chief Executive Officer of the firm. “Like CTOs, CIOs must now continually look at what’s next to keep their organizations resilient and future-proofed against whatever challenges tomorrow may bring,” Gupta says.

For instance, a CEO may demand additional quality control whenever a company’s market share declines. Initiating the deployment of new product lines is another potential responsibility for the COO, who may also be in charge of marketing, production, and Research & Development. If you have an incredible plan for a brand-new software item or product and after exhausting market research, you’re ready to put in a lot of effort to launch your own business. We suggest you stop and think about how many startups fail due to poor performance of business administration(C-suits). We are ready to discuss the partnership and suitable solutions our CTO and CIO may offer for your product development. While role boundaries tend to blur in some companies , the difference lies in their day-to-day responsibilities and scope.

What Does a Chief Technology Officer Do?

And with “digital transformation” being a big buzzword these days, this type of CIO is becoming one of the most prominent. A transformative CIO is one who can take a company’s outdated IT infrastructure and transform it. This includes changes you may expect, like updating software and tools to make a business more competitive. However, it also means migrating apps, workflows, and company data to newer, more secure architectures and systems.

  • Yoram Novick, the second CEO for cloud startup Zadara, brings decades of IT executive experience to the role and talks about …
  • While there are no specific certifications geared to CTOs, individuals seeking a CTO role should also pursue certifications in areas such as project management, development, programming or database administration.
  • This is because many companies still don’t accept the office as a whole, and the role of a CDO in a…
  • The director of engineering focuses on the transformation of teams, developing the engineering culture and optimizing the workforce.
  • As technology has become essential in the business world, new positions continue to arise.

Absent the transmission, your engine may produce great power, but to no avail. All operational skills and capabilities to maintain and run the solution in a production environment inclusive of operations personnel responsible for monitoring and repairing customer impacting incidents. All systems administration, network administration and database administration skills to build and run the product appropriately. “The SAC is kind of like the Supreme Court, and we go through a voting process if it comes to that,” Taliani says. “Any disagreements we may have involve the speed of change that is desired,” explains Mazzariello. “It is Judy’s role to look at the big picture and how to implement technology strategy while considering budget, cultural readiness and so forth. I look at things primarily from a technology standpoint.”

Strategy, Insights, Action

Read our weekly e-newsletter packed with career advice and resources for the strategic technology leader, and information about active searches. We have the resources to source, qualify, and hire your next C-level executive. Through our process, you can find pre-vetted talent that isn’t available through other channels. Let’s talk about how Hunt Club can help you reach your hiring goals today. In this article, we’ll explore the responsibilities of each role, the key differences between them, and whether or not your business needs both. The Customer Champion is common within tech companies with a software focus.

Who does a CTO report to

The vice president of data engineering and the vice president of engineering are two different roles. He or she will be involved in the coaching and mentoring of cross-functional teams while directing the day-to-day operations of the engineering department. The director of engineering focuses on the transformation of teams, developing the engineering culture and optimizing the workforce. This will involve designing and transforming technical strategies, often collaborating with and providing guidance to the VPE who will, then, delegate these strategies to the engineering and development teams. The primary difference between CTO and VP, Engineering is that the chief technology officer has a seat at the top of the executive hierarchy.

A Complete Guide to the Vendor Management System

Determining when a company’s systems and technology need to be updated. If it’s a team of four, then the CTO would likely do coding, at least some portion of the time. https://globalcloudteam.com/ If it’s a larger team, chances are developers would be doing most of the coding while the CTO ensures quality control and offers support from the sidelines.

Who does a CTO report to

As we indicated in the “trust” question above, consider both education and coaching. Consider sending your CTO to an abbreviated or fully accredited MBA course and add coaching to help build muscle around effective business communications. All verbal communication should focus on business outcomes in business terms. If a deeper technical discussion is needed outside of the outcomes that approach engenders, focus on pictures and diagrams rather than words as it will often help the non-technical CEO understand the approach better. The fix to the problem above is to separate monolithic codebases and databases , and to align empowered cross functional teams to “own” these product components. Doing so reduces coordination overhead and complexity of the componentry thereby increasing velocity and development throughput.

Strategic mindset

Emphasising transparency and openness among all employees which minimizes the competition and leads to the company’s growth. A solid understanding of the intricacies and unique aspects of CIO and CTO will help you and your company succeed. GettyIn fact, during the World Economic role of cto Forum at Davos in 2016, Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme presented a compelling analysis. It showed that just over 50% of Fortune 500 companies ceased to exist between 2000 and 2016, and also argued that the primary reason was a failure to embrace digital transformation.

Who does a CTO report to

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.