Chief Technology Officer
Chief Technology Officer
I do following in CTO role (and in Managing Director of Tech role)
Act as an arbiter for architecture decisions
Help Customer executive determine build vs buy decisions
Setup software delivery processes
Hire and grow the team - Software engineers, data science and customer engineer
Establish a culture of learning
Balance product and tech priorities
Design Principles FOR ARCHITECUTRAL DECISIONS
1. N + 1 Design.
Design for Multiple Live Sites and servers. Don’t box yourself into one-site solutions. Never have less than two of anything, and remember the rule of three.
2. Design for scale
Consider 3 axes design. At least have 2 axes in design. Think one step ahead of your scale needs.
3. Design to Be Monitored.
Think about monitoring during the design phase, not after the design is complete.
4. Design to Be Disabled.
Be able to turn off anything you release.
5. Asynchronous Design.
Communicate synchronously only when absolutely necessary.
6. Buy When Non-Core.
If you aren’t the best at building it and it doesn’t offer competitive differentiation, buy it. Otherwise build it.
If capability need learning from data. Build it if you have data. Buy it if vendor has universal data
7. Design for Rollback
Ensure you can roll back any release of functionality.
8. Stateless Systems.
Use state only when the business return justifies it.
9. Scale Out, Not Up.
Never rely on bigger, faster systems.
10. Use Mature Technologies.
Use things you know work well.
11. Commodity Hardware.
Cheaper is better most of the time.
12. Build Small, Release Small, Fail Fast.
Build everything small and in iterations that allow the company to grow.
13. Isolate Faults.
Practice fault-isolative design—implement circuit breakers to keep failures from propagating.
14. Automation over People.
Build everything to be automated—never rely on people to do something that a robot can do.
Whether to build AI or buy AI tools