CTO as a service facilitates addressing complex technical problems ranging from evaluating the project and technology stack to spearheading the full lifecycle product development process while securing a successful launch.
You may come across a bunch of engaging articles positioning the CTO as a service as a low-cost possibility instead of hiring a full-time in-house CTO. Do you agree? In the long run, external assisting services aimed at developing new digital products indeed appear to be more cost-effective. Moreover, one can find even more beneficial advantages of sourcing an external CTO that goes beyond price. In this article, we will discuss these sensitive aspects to help you dive deep into this geek-chic term. We would also like to clarify the benefits of collaboration with external development agencies when it comes to making crucial business decisions about your products and the company’s growth and development. Are you in?
CaaS? CTO? – Fancy Abbreviations or Your Savior
Things are never as bad as they seem! CaaS or CTO as a service stands for a 3rd party consultant or company in charge of the same responsibilities as a classic full-time CTO. In any case, it is a senior executive responsible for leading the tech requirements and managing teams of a specific company. Given several types of CTO as a service, it may vary in duties and the form of cooperation. For instance, if your startup experiences the necessity for a CTO consulting, it is reasonable to hire a part-time external CTO. At the same time, a need for complex tech and business assistance requires full-time in-house employment. So, there are five key types of CTO as a service:
– Full-time internal.
– Full-time offshore.
– Part-time offshore.
– One-time services.
– Interim services.
Speaking about the cost-efficiency of a service, an average price of a full-time internal CTO starts from $18K per month, and an individual consultation would cost $75 per hour. While a sourced CTO can assist with the operations workflow at hand, they mainly impact by integrating processes, tools, and a tech team to achieve rapid and scalable solutions. As per the Entrepreneur, every startup, whether the founders are tech or non-tech, should consider turning to a CTO as a service to secure sustainability, business development, and growth.
CTO as a Service: Key Perks
Business Transformation: Since CTO manages multiple complex tech projects, it’s vital to build, integrate, and implement software development strategies in compliance with the latest software development techniques and best practices. CTO as a service will help your company concentrate maximum efforts on target business markets and put into effect key initiatives to improve customer experience.
Risk Mitigation: CTO as a service facilitates the establishment of holistic operations management, process improvement, and infrastructure management by monitoring budgets and planning resources from a strategic perspective. Also, CTO as a service is efficient in crisis management, security enhancement, and product management.
Team Building and Development: A CTO seeks to provide high-profile mentoring, assistance, coaching, and professional development help for teams by addressing technical gaps in the search for the required technical specialists.
Rapid Engagement: It is clear that CTO can be promptly engaged on a tech project, so you don’t have to waste your time while looking for and selecting an expert.
Key Roles and Responsibilities
Each and every startup business desperately needs a CTO to direct the technical aspect and define the roles and functions during the growth stages. CTO as a service will facilitate all phases of your product, which may cover such steps as:
Prototype Stage: It is also called the proof of concept – a phase in your business growth where you validate your idea or product to identify how possible it is for monetization. Here, CTO will conduct research and feasibility studies, in addition to a proof of concept test, documentation management, and presentation to shed light on the idea or product.
– Discovery Phase: CTO will deliver the technical solution design and architecture development, as well as identify the best tools and technologies and select the tech stack. While collecting various features for the minimum viable product development, CTO analyzes the competitors and assesses possible risks.
– Strategic Project Planning: CTO is expected to incorporate the development of a product plan and its optimization. Regarding other planning activities, CTO will improve and streamline the development processes, build the development roadmap, and prioritize features while estimating budgets and possible timelines.
Minimum Viable Product Stage: You might need assistance when designing a draft version of your product with minimum features which communicate the value proposition to engage users, generate feedback, and fix bugs.
– Project Scaling Phase: A CTO will be a valuable asset to your team when scaling the business by helping you with emerging architectural and technical decisions, analyzing possible strategies, integrating hosting and optimization solutions, etc.
Business Growth Stage: As the business expands, the CTO can assist with hiring developers that are best fit for specific roles. Moreover, securing product quality and reliability may require an audit with an external CTO to have an unbiased perspective on your overall performance.
– Solutioning: A CTO can professionally assess any emerging situation and offer valuable solutions to eliminate communication breakdowns that can impact the development process.
Key Takeaways:
– You don’t run into extra expenses when partnering with an external CTO, but instead, you pay exclusively for the service provided.
– CTO will help a startup make informed decisions relating to its tech stack and additional costs while accelerating product delivery.
– CTO as a service will look at your project from a programmer’s perspective, making the final product easy to use, organizing the team performance, and prioritizing tasks.
– CTO is a tech executive with a clear understanding of your business requirements; CTO as a service ensures the creation of scalable software solutions that can be modified in the future.
About the author:
Janet Polson is a graduate of George Washington University in International business. She is an unspoken expert in the study of science and philosophy. Janet is also a blogger, author of tech articles and she works as business analyst at Computools.