Pros and cons of combining the CTO and CPO roles

There is an industry-standard that defines how the product and engineering teams should be organised. As a rule of thumb, the product team is responsible for product development and its vision, led by the Chief Product Officer. In contrast, the technical team works on its implementation and is overseen by the Chief Technology Officer. In reality, there might be many ways of building your tech team. For the last ten years, I’ve been developing an intercity bus ticket marketplace, Unitiki, from scratch, leading both the tech and product teams simultaneously. I’ll share my thoughts on combining the CTO and CPO roles in this post.

Pros and cons

Combining both roles sounds extremely overwhelming for managers. However, it provides the business with some positive outcomes too. Let’s go through the list of pros and cons:

Pros

— The product and features are built with an eye to technical resources. A manager has an overview of the available resources and skill sets inside the engineering team, which will initiailly influence the product development plan. For example, there won’t be a situation where a product team proposes a feature that won’t sufficiently impact the business results but is difficult to implement from an engineering point of view. A manager will assess this and make changes at the very start of the project.

— Less communication hassle between teams. The complete alignment between the product and engineering teams is essential for creating good products. Having a manager overseeing both teams leads to easier communication and less of a struggle for resources.

— Resources allocation. It’s cheaper to have one top-level manager responsible for the two teams. The resources that are freed up can be invested in other areas of the business.

Cons

— The product development is under authoritarianism. The product depends entirely on one person with their vision and a particular set of competencies and skills. In some cases, it is essential to discuss the product so the engineering teams can develop better solutions. One manager at the head of two departments might lead to limited discussions and suboptimal conclusions.

— Product development is in a bottleneck. When one manager is responsible for two large tasks, it can lead to a prolonged planning process. Multitasking requires more time to consider all options. For instance, working on a product vision, a manager can start thinking of its detailed implementation too early.

— Difficult recruitment. It’s hard to find a manager who can successfully combine two significant roles: there are not many professionals in the market, they are expensive, and it’s hard to assess their competencies.

When you can combine the roles and when you can’t

We’ve discussed the pros and cons of combining the CTO and CPO roles, yet I am convinced that whether you choose to combine the two essential roles in a business depends on the company itself.

When I joined Unitiki more than ten years ago, it was a startup company just getting up and running. I was the first tech person hired whose role it was to build a product, create an infrastructure around that, and build a team for its implementation. Before that, I had around ten years of experience on the engineering team side, as a Chief Technology Officer, and similar positions, at a couple of tech companies. At Unitiki, I’ve spearheaded both the technical and business aspects, coupled with successful funding rounds, that led the company to aggressive growth and market leadership. Yet, the company is still a startup, giving the tech teams a lot of flexibility and space for experimentation.

All the cons of the two positions combine to work best at a startup: you get a manager who can be highly flexible in product development and its creation and also save resources. Yet, it’s better to have a team of highly qualified specialists who can be more independent and simultaneously be ready to take on additional responsibilities in case the manager is overwhelmed. On the other hand, this probably won’t work for companies with extensive engineering and product teams with several products in the portfolio – one person can’t handle the workflow and stay productive and reasonable. And it’s unjustified to have both roles combined at an enterprise where the cons are being eliminated.

Spectrum of competencies

If you consider combining the two roles, I would look at the competencies and skills of a future manager. Both roles are technical at their core, improving the product and solving customer pain points. However, their focus differs: while a CPO is responsible for the product development vision, product design, and innovation, a CTO is more involved with the tech stack required to create the product. Essentially, they deal with different priorities and teams. So, what skills should you have to combine both roles successfully? The obvious answer would be to have competencies in both positions. However, that’s not all.

The CPO and CTO should both have strong technical skills to work with the engineering team and business skills to talk to the business and the product teams. On top of that, I would highlight some more essential skills:

Zoom-in / Zoom-out vision

When a manager is responsible for both engineering and product teams, it’s crucial to think about “How are we going to implement it?”. When working on a product development plan, a manager should be able to assess this simultaneously from the technological point of view. For instance, when you have a new feature in mind, you can see whether it is possible to implement it: do you have resources and competencies? On the other hand, when you see the potential of the tech stack inside your team, you can unlock it by creating a new feature.

Short and long-term planning

It is essential to do long-term planning alongside short-term planning to juggle resources. That will help to avoid overplanning and micromanaging. Yet, long-term planning will be a challenge in a startup, where the culture must pivot to move fast.

Flexibility

The manager taking on both roles will be under a lot of pressure. To reduce this, they should be flexible regarding vision, strategy, planning, and realisation. They should be ready to adjust on the go if they see that, for example, the engineering team cannot produce what the product team wants.

Closing thoughts

Today, many companies, from startups to enterprises, are working on creating an environment for quick pivots and constant growth, especially regarding their tech teams.

Based on my experience and expertise, the CTO and CPO responsibilities in a startup and enterprise have almost nothing in common except the roles’ names. Combining two essential technical roles in a company can be appealing. However, only if the downsides are considered.