Timeless frameworks for hiring, system design, technical decision-making, and organizational excellence.
RSS FeedMaster the art of communicating technical concepts to executives. Learn how to adapt your message for different C-suite audiences, when to escalate, and how to get buy-in for technical initiatives.
A comprehensive framework for assessing your effectiveness as a CTO and your team's functional capabilities, with weighted maturity scoring and AI-driven roadmap planning.
A comprehensive framework for hiring exceptional engineers, from defining roles to making offers, with scorecards and templates.
A practical framework for evaluating and choosing technologies that will serve your team and business for years to come.
A comprehensive decision framework for selecting the right IT governance and service management approach. Compare COBIT, ITIL, ISO 20000, FitSM, and certifications like CGEIT and CISM to build effective IT operations.
A comprehensive security assessment framework for engineering teams. Includes checklists for application security, infrastructure security, compliance requirements, and the path to SOC2 certification.
A comprehensive framework for creating engineering strategy and roadmaps that align technical work with business outcomes. Includes templates for strategy documents, roadmap formats, and prioritization frameworks.
A battle-tested framework for handling production incidents—from the first alert to the blameless post-mortem. Includes severity classification, escalation playbooks, communication templates, and lessons from real outages.
A practical framework for planning and managing engineering budgets. Includes templates for headcount planning, infrastructure costs, tool spending, and quarterly forecasting with real examples.
A comprehensive framework for running performance reviews that engineers actually find valuable. Includes evaluation rubrics, calibration processes, promotion criteria, and templates for every conversation.
A systematic framework for auditing and optimizing your team's meeting culture. Includes meeting cost calculators, decision frameworks for when to meet, templates for effective meetings, and strategies to reclaim deep work time.
A systematic framework for reviewing architecture proposals that balances speed with rigor. Includes review criteria, decision templates, and governance models for teams of all sizes.
A comprehensive framework for evaluating, selecting, and managing software vendors. Includes RFP templates, scoring matrices, contract negotiation tactics, and vendor relationship management strategies.
A comprehensive 30/60/90 day onboarding framework that gets engineers productive faster. Includes checklists, success metrics, common pitfalls, and templates for every stage of the onboarding journey.
A systematic guide to scaling your engineering team without losing velocity or culture. Includes org structures, hiring plans, onboarding frameworks, and the critical inflection points every CTO must navigate.
A comprehensive framework for engineering documentation and knowledge management. Includes documentation tiers, templates for ADRs and RFCs, wiki organization, and processes to prevent knowledge loss.
A comprehensive playbook for new CTOs to navigate the critical first 90 days. Includes listening tour framework, quick wins strategy, relationship building, and credibility establishment.
A systematic approach to making high-stakes technical decisions that balance speed, cost, and long-term maintainability. Includes decision matrices, evaluation templates, and real-world examples.
A systematic approach to evaluating and choosing technology stacks. Includes comparison matrices, risk assessments, and decision frameworks for databases, languages, frameworks, and infrastructure.
A comprehensive career ladder framework for engineering teams. Includes level definitions, promotion criteria, IC vs management tracks, compensation bands, and tools to help engineers chart their growth path.
Time management methodologies for CTOs: a working model that survives incidents
Ransomware attack playbook for CTOs: decisions, containment, recovery, and insurance
How to pass the CGEIT exam: a CTO guide to studying governance, not memorizing terms
Key Takeaways: The fig tree or strangler pattern works when you can control traffic at a choke point and measure outcomes per route.
Most CTOs don't have a postmortem problem. They have a behavior change problem. The doc gets written, the meeting happens, everyone agrees it was a great discussion, and then the same class of incident shows up again 6-10 weeks later.
Most CTOs I talk to don’t struggle with detecting incidents—they struggle with the messy middle: unclear authority, too many cooks in the channel, executives asking for ETAs you can’t honestly give, a...
Have experience to share? We welcome contributions from technical leaders.
Learn how to contribute