Misconceptions about the CPTO role

The main reason to have a CPTO instead of a CTO and a CPO is to tighter integrate and align product and technology and remove any friction. The second reason to do this, is to reduce management bandwidth for the CEO. Why discuss technology and product with the CTO and CPO? Delegate product discovery, definition, development and operation to one person. Hold them accountable for all results, no finger pointing.

If the CTO and CPO are already tightly integrated, don’t have a CPTO. If there is no problem, don’t fix it. Another bad reason to have a CPTO is to safe money and have one less senior manager (because you need two more senior managers to make it work, a CPTO setup is more expensive, not less). The third wrong reason is, because you don’t have enough great product/tech managers and think a CPTO can do both. Voilà! - you’ll fail. Forth if either of the domains is very challenging, e.G. you want to compete with Apple on product, or you have deep tech like SpaceX, have a CTO and CPO that the CEO manages directly.

The biggest implementation mistake is to not have experienced technology and product managers reporting to the CPTO. This is the case if you want to safe money or have one because you lack either a person capable or being a CTO or a person capable of being a CPO. Then there is a gap between the CPTO and their leads on one hand, and gaps in the skills of the CPTO on the other hand.

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