[1/2] Think Like a CTO (Real CTO: Think like a CTO) (Category Management)

I read this book this week by Alan Williamson, who works for a private equity fund and often acts as a temporary CTO for small companies that buy this fund. Alan has written an interesting book about being a technical director. On the table of contents, the book looks good - the author tried to discuss most of the important topics. However, if you look inside, many of these topics are not dug too deep. I attribute this to the fact that Alan has worked mostly with small and non-tech companies, so his advice fits the engineering scale of a few dozen people. The original book was published in Manning, and the translation was published by Peter and it is acceptable.

Now let’s look at the content of the book.

1. Technical Director The author’s reflections on the content of the role of the technical director depending on the size of the company, its type, stage of the life cycle. Far away. 2021 year told What is a CTO from Startup to IPO in Highload++ It's about the same thing, but I think it's more interesting:) 2. Interaction with managers and colleagues Here, the author explains how to find a common language with the CEO and CFO. There are tips about understanding the needs of colleagues and finding a common language with them. In general, it is important to be able to communicate correctly and understand internal politics:) It is also necessary to be able to implement changes correctly. Separately, the author mentions different styles of leadership, citing an example of an orchestra - here I recommend reading a book.The ignorant maestro" ("The ignorant maestro") about the styles of leadership on the example of the styles of famous conductors, about which I have already told. I also recommend reading Seat at the Table, which tells you what a CTO needs to be able to sit at the same table with other top managers. (I mean her, too. told). 3. Long-term vision It is about the vision, mission, strategy of the organization, and the need to make sure that the technology strategy helps with this. The author talks about long-term planning, pitching ideas, budgeting, return on projects, as well as working with the expectations of stakeholders. I can recommend a great book on this topic, "Technology Strategy Patterns: Architecture as Strategy," which I studied more than five years ago and which has given me a lot in terms of building a technology strategy. (I was talking about her. here) 4. Creation of a team - here the author considers different ways of forming a team: hiring in the state, hiring for a contract, outstaff, outsourcing and so on. In fact, the author gives a basic comparison table with the pros and cons of each of the options. He also talks about the skills matrix, which should be filled in by your people in the team, to understand which areas of essential skills are closed well, and what are the risks. (conditionally, only Petya knows about the infra, and if he leaves, then what will become of the servers?) This allows you to find candidates that will strengthen the team. Next, the author talks about the preparation of a vacancy and the search for candidates through different sources. In general, everything is very simple and basic. 5. Interviews, selection of a suitable candidate and their onboarding Here the author talks about the interview, but very basic. I think I’ve covered this much more interestingly in my hiring series: How to Hire in Large CompaniesAnd then separately about developer, chief executive, SRE even analyst. 6. Team management - here the author talks about the types of teams, their goals, metrics, composition and so on. But it seems to me that it is better to read the book "Team topologies" about this topic, in which it is perfectly decomposed what teams are, what goals and formats of interaction they have, the more I already have. told about this book before. Well, I have a big story about this. How to create teams for business needs

Continuation of the book review in next post.

#Management #Leadership #Processes #Software #Architecture #Strategy #ChangeManagement