SmartSuite for the Chief Technology Officer
The Chief Technology Officer leads engineering and technology direction: architecture, platforms, delivery practices and the reliability of what engineering ships. They balance product velocity with operational stability and security, and report engineering performance and technology risk to the executive team.
What you own
The Chief Technology Officer leads engineering and technology direction: architecture, platforms, delivery practices and the reliability of what engineering ships.
- Set technology and architecture direction
- Lead engineering organization, practices and delivery performance
- Own platform reliability, scalability and technical debt decisions
- Govern release, change and DevOps practices with IT operations
- Partner with security on secure engineering and vulnerability management
- Report engineering performance and technology risk to the executive team
Reporting lines
Who this role reports to, who reports to them, and the peers they work with most.
Reports to
Direct reports
Works closely with
How SmartSuite supports this role
Lead
Release and deployment. Tracks releases, deployments and change windows across teams with approvals and rollback records.
Monitoring and events. Connects monitoring events and incidents to the services and releases that caused them.
Security. Tracks vulnerabilities and remediation by system and owner alongside engineering work.
Reporting. Reports delivery throughput, reliability and technical risk from engineering records.
Products this role uses most
Industry reference
ITIL 4's software development, deployment and release practices and the DORA (DevOps Research and Assessment) software delivery metrics, which cover throughput and instability, are the common references for engineering leadership; ISO/IEC 20000-1 and COBIT 2019's build, acquire and implement objectives cover governance of change. Sector regulation reaches the CTO through secure-development expectations: NIST's Secure Software Development Framework (SP 800-218) for suppliers to US government, PCI DSS Requirement 6, the EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act for financial entities and HIPAA's technical safeguards in healthcare.
Related roles
Explore Further
Guides and definitions from the GRC Knowledge Center and the What-is glossary, chosen for this role.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Chief Technology Officer accountable for?
The Chief Technology Officer sets technology and architecture direction, leads the engineering organization, its practices and delivery performance, owns platform reliability, scalability and technical debt decisions, governs release, change and DevOps practices with IT operations, partners with security on secure engineering and vulnerability management, and reports engineering performance and technology risk to the executive team. In SmartSuite those practices run in Release Management, Agile Project Management, Vulnerability Management and Incident Management.
How does SmartSuite help a Chief Technology Officer govern releases across teams?
SmartSuite tracks releases, deployments and change windows across teams in Release Management, with approvals and rollback records on each release. The CTO can see what each team is shipping, whether it has been approved and what the rollback is if it fails, which is the evidence that the release governance agreed with IT operations is being followed. The Engineering Manager and DevOps Engineer plan their releases in the same record.
How are monitoring events and incidents connected to releases?
Monitoring events and incidents are connected to the services and releases that caused them, so when reliability drops the CTO can see whether a release is behind it. Incident Management holds the incidents, IT Operations Planning & Analytics the operational picture, and the link to releases supports the balance the role owns between product velocity and operational stability: the data shows which kinds of change produce incidents, rather than leaving the argument to opinion.
How does the CTO track vulnerabilities alongside engineering work?
Vulnerability Management tracks vulnerabilities and their remediation by system and owner alongside the engineering work, so fixing a vulnerability is a tracked item with an owner in the same place as feature work, not a list handed over by security. The Chief Information Security Officer sees remediation progress on the systems they are concerned about, and the CTO sees the security debt each team carries when deciding on technical debt priorities.
How does the Chief Technology Officer report to the executive team?
SmartSuite reports delivery throughput, reliability and technical risk from engineering records, so the CTO's report to the Chief Executive Officer is a view of how engineering is performing rather than a narrative. Agile Project Management holds the delivery work, so throughput comes from the backlog; reliability comes from incidents and their links to releases; and technology risk from vulnerabilities and remediation. The Chief Information Officer and IT Operations Director read the same service and incident records.
How does SmartSuite fit with the engineering team's existing toolchain?
SmartSuite is the governance and reporting record over engineering delivery: releases, approvals, rollback plans, incidents and vulnerabilities, with the teams' build, source control and deployment tools continuing to do the engineering work. New customers can start with SmartSuite Onboarding, a guided four-week program around one or two priority workflows, starting with release tracking and incident links and adding vulnerability remediation and backlog reporting as teams adopt them. Secure-development expectations from regulators are then evidenced from the record.
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