Problems and solutions are the chicken and egg of tech-driven startups. When creating a product, do you start with a solution, an innovative piece of tech, or do you find a problem and curate the tech needed to solve it?

Either approach comes with pitfalls. A solution-led approach can easily create an interesting gadget with no real-world applications. Starting with the problem, however, can lead down a path where there is no feasible solution.

For most companies, there are two roles typically designed to deal with this struggle – the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and the Chief Product Officer (CPO). The CTO finds solutions to problems, asking the question ‘can we do it?’

The CPO, meanwhile, assesses the market, deals with customers, taking their feedback and identifying ways to create value. They answer the question ‘should we do it?’

But a new approach is gaining traction – the role of the Chief Product and Technology Officer (CPTO). This combines both roles into one person in a more agile and comprehensive position.

To better understand how a CPTO can benefit companies, DIGIT spoke with board advisor and scaleup expert Matt Little to learn more.

Productive

“The role of product has really grown over the last 10 years,” Little notes. “Everyone had a CTO, but very few people had a CPO.”

Alongside the CEO, most tech startups begin with a CTO. They come naturally to startups that are borne from innovate tech or are founded by a specialist in their field.

However, technology is only half of a company’s offering. The other half is turning the innovation into a useable product.

At the start of a company’s journey, the CTO can often fulfil the roles of a CPO – with only a handful of customers, creating a product is relatively simple. But as the customer base grows, and attracting new customers becomes crucial, expectations increase.

“As you start trying to balance multiple different (and often conflicting) sets of demands from customers, you then need someone to start deciding what to build,” Little explains.

It is around then that CPOs are usually hired, in part, to take customer feedback and analyse market demand to guide product development to create value for the company.

“When trying to evaluate opportunities, when using a limited set of resources to deliver maximum value to the organisation, when confronted with dozens of requests, the CTO thinks ‘I can’t build them all’. The CPO thinks ‘I shouldn’t build them all’,” he adds.

Finding Value

Ultimately, tech and product are inextricably linked. Creating a product requires an understanding of the underlying tech, and creating the tech requires vision to see how it will serve a purpose.

To a certain extent, treating them as separate roles creates a false dichotomy. A CPO without an understanding of the tech can ask for unfeasible products. A CTO without an understanding of product can create interesting toys with no real value or overengineer a product with redundant features.

“You’ve got this nice collaboration between the two roles, when they’re separate,” Little explains. “They’re two sides of the same coin and, in theory, they operate well together.

“It’s when there is significant conflict between requests or an imbalance between the volume and level of requests and the capability to deliver them that you need to start evaluating how to drive maximum value from the choices you make.”

Ultimately, there is a symbiotic relationship between the two roles.

“While the CTO looks at how to do it and the CPO whether it should be done, they’re both trying to build a solution for a customer and to solve the customer’s problem,” Little notes.

But keeping the roles separate can result in confusion and miscommunication. This happens especially as an organisation grows, demands pile up and products get more complicated.

“This can end up creating friction between technology and product,” Littles explains. “Tech has their own things they feel they need to do, and product has its own direction. The value that was brought in by having a CPO might, in some places, be eroded by having the separation of roles.”

Combined Role

To that end, many companies are increasingly adopting the position of the CPTO, combining the two roles into one.

“This empowers somebody who understands the problem and understands enough of the solution to solve it, rather than giving it to two people and letting them run off in separate directions and do their own thing,” Little says.

“It is foolish to decide what to build if you have no capability to deliver it. Equally, you can’t have someone who can build anything that doesn’t know what to build.”

The end result is a more agile position that can make decisions faster and coordinate different demands more easily.

“A lot of organisations are beginning to realise that having a senior level person with heads of development and product managers underneath them who’s responsible for both actually makes sense.

“Bringing the two together gives somebody the tools and the marginality not only to decide what to build but then go and make it happen.”

How and Why

For the most part, many of the skills involved in the CTO role are found in the CPO role. As such, combined role can be created without overwhelming the new CPTO.

“The skills overlap is around trying to build the right thing,” Little notes. “How you get to define what the right thing is where the difference lies.”

As such, for people starting out in one role, adding a few new skills can help them move away from the extremes of being either product and tech focused.

“Finding people who can do both is difficult,” Little notes. “But there are a lot of CTOs who’ve moved more into the centre ground between product and tech. And there are a lot of the CPOs who have realised that they can’t deliver without understanding more of the tech, so they’ve also moved into the centre. (Is this the end of the quote?)

Ultimately, a CPTO can be more than the sum of their parts as they have more freedom to identify and solve problems.

“One of the positives is you’re asking someone to solve a problem and giving them all the tools to do it,” Little says. “It is hard to find someone who is good and can operate in that middle space. But if you can find that person, then why would you not give them all the tools you need.”

Recommended

• Comment | Developing data talent in key industries

There are several key abilities CPTOs need to fulfil the role’s potential.

“One of the key skills is understanding when you need to deliver the right product to your customer, with limited resources to do so,” Little says.

“And understanding how to get good feedback from customers, how to evaluate risk, how to evaluate value, how to prioritise potential opportunities. And within that prioritisation, ask can we build this and how much would it cost to build it or run.

“Being able to balance those two things with a good solid understanding of tech, and a very good understanding of customer and product. You don’t need to be a coder to be a CPTO. But you do need to be able to have a sense for technology conversation with a technologist.”

However, putting a lot of investment in a single person does come with risks.

“A potential negative is you have no checkpoint,” Little adds. “If you have one CPTO, there is no one saying that I think that’s the wrong thing. You’ve almost given someone potentially too much control and power.”

With technology more integrated into society than ever, customer demands and expectations are growing. Customers are looking for ever more intuitive and user-friendly offerings.

“Ultimately, organisations are waking up to some of the challenges and are moving to a more product-led organisation,” Little says.

Get the latest news from DIGIT direct to your inbox

Our newsletter covers the latest technology and IT news from Scotland and beyond, as well as in-depth features and exclusive interviews with leading figures and rising stars.

To subscribe, click here.