NYC CTO School S1 T2 CTO Tips & TriX

NextNY CTO School Fall 2010
Tips & TriX
Collection of Random Thoughts

Know when you are in
over your head
Tell People, Find Mentors, Reach Out.

Understand Your Domain
Read, Take Classes, learn the domain
area you are in.

Your job is to support the BUSINESS
That’s the ultimate way that you are judged – is the technology allowing the business to grow and fulfill its objectives.

Set Priorities for Team
Your developers have the responsibility to do things right. Your responsibility is to make sure they are doing the right things, which is more important.

Value of Information
As Co-Founder /Member of Exec Team, you have access to better information about where business is going. That alone allows you to make technical tradeoffs much better than even your best developer.

Code Reuse
Plugins, Components, Libraries,
Third-Party Software

Understand Key Building Blocks
Content Management Systems
Queueing / Messaging Systems
Personalization
NoSQL Persistence
SOAP / REST / XML Processing
Portal-Like Systems
Authenticatoin / Authorization Systems
Knowledge Systems
Workflow Systems
Semantic Web Technologies
Web Scrapers
Cache Grids

Automate As Much As Possible
Agility is a huge source of
competitive advantage over established companies.

Delegation
Even if you are alone, delegate in clever ways. I.e. managed hosting, virtual admin, oDesk, interns.

Delegation
Each task – think through – am I the best person to do it.
If I am the best person to do it (for many tasks), do I NEED to do it?
Build capacity over time, with giving larger and larger tasks.
Have to accept others doing inferior job at times, but you need to set performance standards.

Know (a bit of) Everything
You need to know “enough” about
everything in your technology.

Use Technology Appropriately
Don’t get seduced by cool technologies
BUT
use cool technologies.

Be an Expert in Your Stack
Do NOT be seduced by the fact that you can be productive in your platform of choice very quickly. It takes a long time to learn best practices. Mastery of the platform even more than mastery of the language.

Quality is Relative
Find balance between short-term getting stuff done and long-term technical debt

Prioritize Quality Correctly
Different definitions depending on your maturity and size.
If you have no users nobody cares if:
Your app is fast / slow / scalable
Your app is down/ up
Your app is insecure/ secure

Find the 80/20 Solution
Find the key 20% of functionality that will get 80% of the value. (Eric Ries).

Learn how to Hire
Hiring and spotting talent is a key skill for growing your team.

Get a Life
Remember your startup is not the only important thing; in fact, there are many things that are much more important

Cultivate your network
Former co-workers, college buddies, meetups.

Participate
User Groups / Meetups
Mailing Lists / Forums
OSS Contributions
Public Speaking
Blogs
Hacker News / Reddit / Digg
To a Point

NYC CTO School S1 T2 CTO Tips & TriX

by Jean Barmash

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