Fifteen Great CTO Leadership Hacks

In this section, I will help you get your new CTO role off to a great start.

Being a CTO is a difficult job, and the side of the road is littered with the faded business cards of your predecessors who didn't make it. I will share 3 statistics with you that will help you remain humble.

In this lecture, you will learn how to take control of your onboarding and onboard yourself. 

In this lecture, you're going to take some time to get to know your team. Pay close attention to your team member roles. Which roles are missing, and what does that tell you about your organization?

In this lecture, you will decide which agile method you are going to use in your organization. Will you roll out XP, SCRUM, or Kanban? Be mindful of the pro's and con's of each method.

In this lecture, you are going to check if anything is on fire in your organization. Deal with any risks that have a high likelihood and high impact immediately.

Congratulations on finishing this section. Here's what you have learned so far. 

In this section, I'll help you gain situational awareness in your new organization. 

In this lecture, you're going to discover who your stakeholders and powerholders are. Who can make a difference in your ability to deliver results? Who holds power over you?

In this lecture, you will learn what matters to your stakeholders and powerholders. How are they judging your performance and the performance of your team? What is important to them?

In this lecture, you will learn how your team creates value. And the answer may not be as simple as getting your deliverables in the hands of customers. 

In this lecture, you will find out what your team has to prove, and by when. How are your stakeholders and powerholders watching you and your team, and what do they expect in the near-, medium- and long term?

In this lecture, you will learn what you have to prove. How are your stakeholders and powerholders watching you, and what do they expect from you in the near-, medium-, and long term?

Congratulations on completing this section. Here's a summary of what you have learned so far. 

In this section, I'll help you turn your team and your agile process into a well-oiled machine.

In this lecture, you will do a due diligence on the backlog of your projects and products. 

In this lecture, you're going to join the development team and sit in on one of their sprints. Check if they are implementing Agile correctly, and verify that the team is holding planning, daily scrum, review, and retrospective meetings.

In this lecture, you're going to optimize the build process in your organization. Make sure you have development, integration, staging, and production stages in your build pipeline. 

In this lecture, you're going to confront your team with several hypothetical disasters and see how they respond. Are they able to restore data the way you ask? And how long do they need to get the job done? 

In this lecture, you will test your quality assurance department. Do you have one? Are they embedded in the development team? Do they have a collaborative or adversarial relation with the dev team? 

Congratulations on completing the course! Here's a summary of everything you have learned. 

Here you can download the slides I used for the individual lectures of this course.