Development in AI and (digital) product engineering put more pressure on the right product and tech strategy combined with fast execution.
A unified C-Level role to answer those questions is inevitable.
The CPTO is the answer, but requires proper definition, shareable knowledge, and context.
Practitioner Positioning
The CPTO Website as well as the underlying Framework and Definition were built by practitioners: executives and engineering leaders who have managed teams, shipped scalable software systems, and sat in boardrooms explaining technical trade-offs.
As software becomes the core driver of modern business value, splitting product vision from engineering execution creates unnecessary drag.
The CPTO represents the evolution of executive technology leadership.
Initiator speaking
This project has been initiated by Jens Kuerschner, a software engineer and product leader with over 20 years of experience in building and scaling software products and teams - on all levels and all kinds of companies.
I always generated the biggest impact and value, when I directly linked product vision and strategy with engineering execution.
And explaining it to the board in a way they could finally understand.
Everywhere I stepped in, product and engineering were forced to somehow align, which was failing 100% of the time. Sometimes very obvious, sometimes only visible when compared to other organizations. People built huge frameworks and bought a thousand tools to mitigate this broken setup. A CPTO can prevent most of the issues top-down.
That's why I strongly believe that the CPTO is the natural evolution of executive technology leadership.
This website and the underlying framework are my contribution to the community, to help organizations and executives understand the role and its value. I want to add resources, examples, and shareable knowledge to get an idea of what CPTOs can do and why they are needed.