CTOs and developers are out of control, and AI makes it worse
About being out of the control loop
CTOs are out of control.
When I was CTO, this was the biggest problem for me and developers. I was out of control. I was cut out of the control loop. I was the only executive in the company who needed to ask someone else - the Head of Product or CPO - if I could tell the people in my department what to do. Imagine, the VP of Marketing would need to ask the CTO before a marketeer could work on a campaign - or what the marketeer should work on at all. But for me, the CTO, this was normal. The roadmap was stuffed and I had to ask - sometimes beg - to get tech topics into it.
And I’m not alone. Many of my CTO clients suffer the same fate. They are out of control, out of the control loop of what is being built. How did this happen?
We need to look at the Theory of Control. We have looked at software development as managing work and - especially with Lean - work flow. But software development is not about work flow, it is about control flow. Who controls what, when and how something is build. We have work elements and control elements in a company. Work elements, like Developing, produce output. Control elements, often meetings like Sprint Planning, control what, when and how something is build.
With Scrum control flow was rerouted. Before Scrum, control flowed from the CEO through the CTO into a program office into program managers and project managers. The CTO was part of the control loop. Then Scrum showed up and the product owner was invented. We could of course had made the PO part of technology - there is no rule that the PO had to be a product manager, it could be a tech lead - but the PO was made part of something that was also new, product management. And while requirement engineering and analysts often were part of the CTO realm, product management, for whatever reason, was not. Product management injected themselves between the CEO and development. Coup d’État accomplished.
From that point on, the CTO was cut out of the control loop. She was out of control.
But the how to build software, the clean code, and architecture, system design and tech choices still rest with the CTO (or with developers). At least this part of development is still controlled by technology and not somebody else.
Then AI showed up. And just like Scrum, rerouted control. AI generates the code. And people don’t know what code is generated, many don’t even care. The last part of control CTOs held is on the edge of being taken away. AI makes it worse. The last bit of control lost.
What can CTOs do? They need to get in control again. They need to take a stand. In the end, developers are part of technology and it is ridiculous that CTOs need to ask other executives if they are allowed to tell developers what to do. Demand a say in what is build. If you believe some technological debt needs to be payed back, go for it. Don’t let others drive you to postpone what needs to be done.
Some CTOs I know have lost the AI topic to other departments, just like they lost control over what is build. Don’t let them cut you out of the control loop again. Own AI. Became a CAIO. Regain control.