What role should technical chief (CTO) assume in different stages of entrepreneurship?

1, the general responsibility of technical management

The general responsibility of the manager is two: Build the team, complete the task. But as the company's technical leader, need to add a technical skills: technology selection.

The idea of completing the task is passive, I prefer to accomplish the goal (G).

Construction team T1, Technology selection T2, the completion of the target G three constitute the technical director of the three basic functions, and the different stages of entrepreneurship, the role of the technical director is only the three functions of the emphasis on different points.

The above three, the construction team, technology selection T is the basis for the purpose or to achieve the objectives of the enterprise, so the completion of the objective G is the goal.

Completing the analysis of target G can be applied to the project management triangle: Time, scope, resources. The company's requirements on time and scope determine the input and composition of resources. That is, the completion of the goal itself will have their own special needs of the team and technology, that is, reaction to T. The relationship between the three is easy to understand, but in essence you have me, I have you, indivisible. Please understand by yourself, I do not use the graph to express.

Construction team has a very rich connotation, a way of decomposition is people-centered, relatively good to remember: the selection of fertility retention. That is, selecting, employing, educating and keeping people. Another way of decomposition is the management function of the dimension, more detailed, including: organizational design, talent planning, recruitment, appointment, training, assessment and motivation, leadership and control, team culture construction.

The three basic functions of the technical director can be expressed in another way, that is, three things in the eyes of the technical director: products, technology, people. In the different stages of entrepreneurship, the role of technical director is different but the emphasis of these three events is different. Do not expand in detail.

2, the start-up stage of S1 technology management

The role of the technical director at this stage can be called CTO or technical director, but the actual responsibility is more in favor of technical Leader (TL), technology leader.

G is most important at this stage and is almost the only target of TL. This is not decided by technology, but by the characteristics of the entrepreneurial enterprise itself. Either survive or die, enterprise survival is the completion of business objectives, the corresponding technical team must go all out to achieve technical goals, no doubt.

T1 can be simplified to recruit, people recruit in the pit to be needed to throw on the line, because people Shegang also become a practical way. Therefore, the more common error or misunderstanding is because there is no good human resources planning, often recruit the wrong person, or need a person when not. Therefore, it is very important that TL is a faceted expert at this stage. In short, the company's technology is missing, the CTO has to do it himself. In other words, startups that have successfully passed this stage usually have a general CTO.

This phase of the TL how to recruit, and recruit what kind of people into the company, it seems to be to achieve the goal, but indirectly laid a company's technical culture. This is a lot of the initial phase of the CTO and the CEO easy to ignore the problem.

At this stage, the high risk is actually the technology selection T2. On the one hand, the CTO in this matter to complete the goal of G, to the technical selection of time and energy relatively little, on the other hand, at this time the technology selection, laid a company's future technology direction, also laid the composition of the technical team, can say in fact T2 should be the CTO's only goal

To sum up, in the initial stage (S1), the role of the CTO is to complete the technical objectives G, technical work of the characteristics of the CTO needs the role of technical selection T2.

The balance is a sign that the CTO is successful.

How to choose technology selection, domestic Daniel has a lot of mature experience, but also to give you a lot of papers to. But in startups, it's simplified to two results: 1 What the TL chooses, and 2 what the industry chooses. The former or back to the front in bold words, do not care what technology is appropriate, the company only he knows best, he is suitable. However, if the CTO is not the founder of the company, this risk is very high: CTO technology is very cow, but not suitable for the company to do, or not to change? The latter is relatively safe, but what is the industry really popular? Ha ha.

Therefore, a type of technology selection is to see what people on the market line, the company can find someone to see the ability of the team to set technology.

Entrepreneurial Enterprise is full of robin practices, but also can do, this is a start-up enterprise has a dynamic side.

Let's just say, the quality of the target G in this stage determines whether the enterprise can survive, the team construction T1 technology selection T2 determines whether the enterprise survives the next stage of development smoothly.

Note: In the earlier part of the use of TL, the CTO for a while, hoping to indicate changes in the role of the connotation. TL is with the team to achieve the goal, CTO will be biased macro-technical management.

3, the development stage of entrepreneurship S2 technology Management

The role of the technical director at this stage should be the chief of technology, and the precise definition of responsibility should be the Director of research and Development. In the three basic functions of technology management, TD's main focus should be on T1 and construction team.

TD must promptly change its career positioning, from the forefront of the TL, to the back of the command of the TD. Many technical leaders at this stage can not adjust their role in time, become a technical team development of the foot stone. There are many in the market for the conversion of TL management training, suitable for the large enterprise TL growth course, for the start-up enterprises, actually need.

The importance of this phase of the relative t1,t2 may not change, the urgency is greatly reduced, basically maintain the need to change. That is, TD needs to be based on the company's business development, real-time monitoring technology to ensure that the technology has not become a bottleneck.

In this phase of technology selection should be fully certified, according to the company's business direction to determine, and absolutely can not be based on TD's technical capabilities or team's technical capabilities to choose, but according to the business decision technology, by the technical decision team.

At this stage, G can not be ignored, but said that TD if you can do a good team building t1,g is the inevitable thing. Technical objectives should be the indirect task of TD, not the direct task. TD relies on his team to accomplish technical goals rather than himself.

4, the stable stage of entrepreneurial S3 technology management

The so-called stability phase, but is relatively stable. This stage of technical leaders can barely become CTO, or the company's role of technical leaders defined as CTO or TD, reflects the technical leaders of different positioning.

If it is TD, the role of technical director and development phase S2 similar. The difference is that the team in S2,TD's eyes should be everyone, and the team in S3,TD's eyes is more of a team's backbone than everyone else.

If the CTO, at this stage, his role's main responsibility should return to G, at this time the G has not only completed the target G, but the development goal G: What is the company's future technical goals? The technical goal is decided by the industry's technology development and the enterprise's own product goal, behind is the enterprise's management goal. Therefore, in fact at this time the CTO and CPO, CEO, CFO and other issues of concern should be consistent, but the different aspects of the focus of the different functions.

Some CTO at this stage also indulge in technology, can not pay attention to the business objectives, it is not appropriate.

Back to the technology itself, this phase of the CTO if the enterprise from the initial stage of the incumbent, then he should also go to some management courses, change their reliance on experience to work can also be successful habits. This kind of management training, not must learn some management theory tool consciousness, but always vigilance oneself thinking solidify. On the other hand, he should try to contact more people from different industries in the same industry, develop ideas to help enterprises better development.

CTO has the name T, but in fact, as the team increases, the role of the different emphasis, the CTO does not have a good grasp of T. At this point, the first two stages of the technical culture down to really determine the company's technical, technical atmosphere.

5, team-building technical team personnel ratio

The simple and rough division of the technical team consists of three groups of people: Leader/manager, Backbone, general engineer

The so-called backbone has a lot of definitions, I like this: a self management ability of employees, only need managers to give direction can be high quality to complete the task of the staff.

The proportion of these three, more emphasis on the backbone or more emphasis on ordinary engineers, reflects the management style of technical leaders, the technical culture of enterprises, corporate culture part.

Although theoretically, as the company's development, technical leaders must be more emphasis on the backbone. But it is a very interesting phenomenon that the technical leaders of the startups I have come into contact with are often more inclined to be ordinary engineers. I guess probably most of them are from a small team of TL to grow up CTO. So, most of the teams that can be seen are made up of this tree-shaped structure:

Manager: Backbone: Staff =1:1:8

The manager of the backbone as his deputy, think he is not thin, hope that he can do his best to help himself. But the backbone of the deputy is often unwilling to do so, feel that they have encountered bottlenecks. The result is the backbone is unstable, the manager CTO can never get rid of the status of TL.

Of course, this kind of team organization is the most common way, it is easy to get the approval of the Human resources department and more senior leaders, which is probably the reason why most technical teams adopt the tree structure.

My own ideal team is 1:4:5, even my own 1 should be excluded from the completion is a flat team, the team rely on a strong backbone to become a team that has been self-organizing. As a technical person can really care about his stage of concern: goals, team organization, technical direction. Such a team does not in itself imply an increase in the cost of human resources, and it is possible to control costs by reducing the number of people. Of course, so far, I have only met a CTO who has the same opinion as me.

Appendix 1, the division of the start-up stage

The above s1,s2,s3, the industry should have the standard Division law, I like to use the number of technical team to roughly divide:

S1 <20

20<s2<100

s3>100

The 20 here is an estimate, and I usually say that the CTO can directly manage the number of team members, that is, the 20 people are directly to the CTO reporting work.

The 100 here is only an approximate estimate, and I usually know the CTO as a whole to understand the limits of all the team members whose work, ability, and career needs. If CTO itself can only know 50 people, then your team of more than 50 people, it should be S3.