Every startup or growing company should have a chief technology officer on their team. This may be a full-time expert, but sometimes choosing the CTO as a Service option makes sense to save time and other resources. Below, we will discuss a CTO role and whether you need it in your company.
What Is CTO as a Service?
CaaS (CTO as a service) is a way of cooperation with a chief technology officer, in which the company hires an external specialist to develop and solve problems of the technical team problems and help bring new ideas to life.
CTO service has a flexible pay model: depending on the company’s needs, the third-party CTO will work when needed, from a few hours a week to a standard full-time job, or occasionally. It’s better to choose this type of service for startups, MVPs, and other rapidly developing projects and organizations.
Do You Need CTO as a Service?
Here are some use cases where CTO as a Service can be beneficial for a business:
- Have an idea for a product, but you don’t understand how to implement it;
- Have developed your first product or part of an application but understand that its architecture is not suitable for subsequent updates or they are outdated in general;
- Your business needs a professional with many years of technical experience;
- You need an unbiased view of various technical issues and an expert to guide your development team.
What Tasks Does CTO as a Service Perform?
Depending on your business niche, business goals, project size, and the number of employees, you can hire CTO to delegate various responsibilities. Nevertheless, the main ones are listed below.
Management
Usually, a CTO service’s typical responsibilities include developing short-term and long-term technical strategies, including analyzing technological, social, and scientific trends, comparing these strategies with the company’s business goals, participating in management decision-making, and identifying risks and opportunities.
Research & Development
These responsibilities include managing technology research and development, maintaining up-to-date information on technology standards and compliance policies, researching and recommending the most effective solutions, and more.
Architecture design
This responsibility includes managing multiple development teams, making critical technology decisions, building product architecture, technical design planning, technical supervision, and more.
QA, product testing, and cybersecurity
Here, the virtual CTO takes responsibility for distributing tasks among team members involved in testing and debugging the product, coordinating approaches to quality control and technology, developing security procedures and algorithms, emergency audits, etc.
Interaction with stakeholders
Finally, the CTO is responsible for presenting the company’s technology strategy to stakeholders, finding technical talent and managing team growth, building relationships with customers and vendors, and more.
Final Thoughts
Now you know what CTO as a Service is and can decide if such a cooperation model is right for you. Please contact us if you are looking for an expert to take on these responsibilities.
