This is a checklist for a new CTO, head of Product, or leader in a similar role starting in a new job. It is meant to kickstart continuous improvement in your product engineering organization. I encourage you to take a scientific test and learn approach to everything you do. You should customize this template based… Continue reading 90 Day Plan for a CTO in a New Job
Tag: checklist
CTO Mind Map: Culture, Technology, Operations
In the role of chief technology officer, you have to be concerned with many topics. Some relate to functions you have direct supervisory responsibility for and some in areas that are managed by others but you still need to share responsibility for. To keep all of a CTO’s concerns organized, I created this mind map using XMind. The items are classified under… Continue reading CTO Mind Map: Culture, Technology, Operations
3 Roles of a CTO: Culture. Technology. Operations.
This is a guide for CTOs, VPs of Software Engineering and other technology managers responsible for a software engineering organization. The purpose of this checklist is to help the CTO cover the areas of culture, technology and operations in their teams. It is presented in the form of a memo to direct reports. Dear Tech… Continue reading 3 Roles of a CTO: Culture. Technology. Operations.
3-5-7 Meeting Format for Weekly Staff Meetings
If you are the manager of a team of people at your job, here is a format we suggest for running your staff meetings. We call it the 3-5-7 format because of its convention of giving 3 to 5 minutes per person to answer 7 questions. This system assumes that you have fewer than ten direct… Continue reading 3-5-7 Meeting Format for Weekly Staff Meetings
5 Productivity Tips for Executives in Leadership & Management Roles
Here are 5 productivity tips for executives in leadership & management roles. Each tip involves the number 5. Every morning (or the night before), make a prioritized list of the top 5 things you plan to accomplish that day. These are your must-do tasks for the day. At the day’s end (or when making the… Continue reading 5 Productivity Tips for Executives in Leadership & Management Roles
CAREER-CLEAR: An Employee Evaluation and Career Development System
CAREER-CLEAR is a system for doing fair, consistent and constructive employee performance evaluations and determining employee rank, title and compensation. It is meant to be used by supervisors to identify areas for improvement for their employees and to guide their career growth. Employees are scored in a total of 5 categories. Upto 10 points can… Continue reading CAREER-CLEAR: An Employee Evaluation and Career Development System
Hosting Large-Scale Web Sites: Contract Review Guide for the CTO
If you host and operate large-scale Web sites, or negotiate contract agreements with vendors that provide such services, you need to understand what should be included in a Web hosting infrastructure. This knowledge will help you in three areas: Providing reliability, scalability & good performance Minimizing risks via security, privacy, regulatory compliance and reduction of… Continue reading Hosting Large-Scale Web Sites: Contract Review Guide for the CTO
Understanding SLA Uptime Percentages
The table below helps illustrate why you should ensure that the “SLA Uptime Measurement Meter Reset Window” is the same duration as your billing cycle or shorter. Availability % Downtime per year Downtime per month (30 days) Downtime per week Downtime per day 90 “one nine” 36.5 days 72 hours 16.8 hours 2.4000 hours 95… Continue reading Understanding SLA Uptime Percentages
Checklist for Migration of Web Application from Traditional Hosting to Cloud
In 2010, Cloud Computing is likely to see increasing adoption. Migrating Web applications from one data center to another is a complex project. To assist you in migrating Web applications from your hosting facilities to cloud hosting solutions like Amazon EC2, Microsoft Azure or RackSpace’s Cloud offerings, I’ve published a set of checklists for migrating… Continue reading Checklist for Migration of Web Application from Traditional Hosting to Cloud
Opinion on the Amazon S3 Outage; Checklist for Dealing with Outages
My journalist colleagues at Wired.com published some of my comments related to Amazon S3.1 Wired also posted another article titled Customers Shrug Off S3 Service Failure. I agree with the views of many of the customers expressed in the article. Don MacAskill, CEO of the popular photo hosting site Smugmug, wrote an understanding post about… Continue reading Opinion on the Amazon S3 Outage; Checklist for Dealing with Outages
You must be logged in to post a comment.