Startup CTO – Building the Initial Product Development Plan

The initial questions a CTO must answer in the business plan include defining the product plan, estimating the initial development costs and estimating operational costs as the business expands. Most business plans will have a few pages that define the product and a few more on the marketing plan. There might be an investor presentation. There often is a list of competitive products that should be analyzed for ideas, strengths, and weaknesses. From there, the CTO has a limited amount of time to draw up a skeleton plan.

I’ve used a few tools to help develop this blue print. I start off with a simple spreadsheet and begin organizing the key functional areas of the product. I use a separate worksheet to list and categorize screens (web pages…) of the site. I then often go to a document template to help describe the screens and functionality of the site.

I don’t develop site diagrams or screen shots as part of this exercise. Not yet at least.

This exercise often takes several iterations. In the first iteration, I will concentrate on key functionality and screens. I will then put this up for review to make sure that nothing was missed and to begin collecting more specifics on the business rules. I use the second iteration to determine what I call glue screens and functionality. For example, on a consumer website this might be pages like logging in, functionality like forgot password, preference pages, etc. The final pass I do usually revolves around administrative tools and controls. A good first pass of the administrative tool’s functionality can be developed by documenting simple rules in a Must Should Could format. For example, “An administrator must be able to lookup a user’s information based on user id or email address”.


Think short and long term

It’s important to think short term and long term requirements. Itemize the full feature set including features that you have no need or desire to build in the first version of the product. Eventually, you can prioritize these into a long term development plan. It’s also important to consider the must requirements for a feature or screen as well as a fully developed version. You will eventually need to prioritize the individual elements of the feature, but the more details you fill out on scope, the easier it will be to plan for the future.


Next up: Prioritizing and estimating timeline and cost.


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Top Questions A Startup CTO Must Answer

One of the first formal exercises in starting a company is the development of a business plan. For technology startups, the plan is the essential sales tool for bringing in outside investment and is the foundation for the operational plan. Now some technology companies get started by an entrepreneur with a new technology but many others are started based on a business idea, product, or marketing concept that requires a technical implementation. I am more familiar with the latter. I’ll get a call; a friend, a friend of friend… has an idea, a plan, just needs a tech guy to come and fill in the missing pieces of the business plan…

So while every startup is different, here are some key questions asked of the head technologist when developing the business plan

  • What is the product and the key feature set?
  • How many people do you need?
  • How long will it take to build?
  • What technologies are needed?
  • What are the costs for hosting and licensing?
  • Can we buy some of the technology?
The first question is the most interesting. Typically, the business plan starts with the concept, financial model, customers, competition... and a description of the product or service. The details of the product become a work in progress and the CTO becomes partially responsible for helping define them.

The other questions are all related to cost and feasibility. The founding entrepreneurs can develop the revenue projections but needs help to identify startup and operational costs. They will want ways to help accelerate development (can we buy some technology...) and want some basic tech details so that they can fill in these details in their presentations.

This defines the first role of the startup CTO. The CTO will need some background in product management, project management and finance to participate in developing the business plan. They need to estimate quickly, accurately and confidently. They need to strong research skills to learn the industry, the business model, and to help shape the product. They have to remember to have fun because while defining the model is important to a business, building it is the hard part.
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When a Guru Software Developer is not a Startup CTO

In my last post, I talked about super developers and the skills and traits that might make them inclined to become startup CTO’s. There is no doubt that developers with the speed and skills that I outlined are capable of delivering early versions of a website, application, or software product. But, it’s been my experience that these skills alone are not enough. In fact, developers with only this skill set that choose the CTO startup route could create a disaster not only for the startup, but for their careers as well.

Good developers themselves should know why this is the case. They know that when developing a software product, the coding of the product should be the easy part. They’ll tell you that if you have good requirements, if you identify the scope of each feature correctly, if you prioritize your stories, if you design before code, and especially if you follow a test driven methodology and develop unit tests before coding, then this is true, the coding becomes the easy part. But here is the disconnect: all these things, developing requirements, priorities, and testing methodologies are all very difficult to achieve and may be overkill in a startup.

In my experience, one key role of a startup CTO is to quickly determine how much effort should be applied to these different disciplines and tasks in developing software. Does the feature require prototyping? Does the user interface need testing? Could performance be an issue and should this be tested? To what degree, if any, should the code for a feature set be designed for reuse? Identifying how much investment in time or money in a feature is a key question for any development exercise but is absolutely critical in a startup.

So the quick answer to the question of whether a guru developer can be a startup CTO is a maybe, but probably not. A fast developer that jumps into feature design, software design, and coding will fail to recognize the costs and risks of the development exercises.

A guru developer also needs skills in project management, software QA, and some experience negotiating with business people on requirements. They need experience working with small teams and have to be strong at informal methods of estimating cost and risk.

But is that enough? It’s a start but I’ll elaborate in my next posts.

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What it takes to be a startup CTO?

Several people have asked me this question recently. Developers have asked me, “Do I have what it takes?” while the VC’s ask me “Does the CTO know she is doing?” and startup executives want to know “Sure he can write code, but will he be able to grow the technology?” All good questions, and there are many factors that go into answering this question.

Let’s start with the developer. Most of the developers that ask me this question are smart, fast, very strong programmers, a jack of many trades, and in some cases, mavericks. They’re fast learners and have enough confidence that they can learn whatever it is that they don’t know. Many of them love technology whether it’s building super web 2.0 sites, or love gadgets, or are very sharp designers. But these developers are not just coding geeks; they also have a good sense (or at least they think they do!) of what products and features will work. In a nutshell, hand them a one or two pager on what a website or an application needs to do and they know enough to build it soup to nuts. They exert confidence and can very charismatic. Most are workaholics. They are often associated with having big egos, but I’ve also met those that are quiet and introverted.

In this day of agile development, these developers are often strong enough to get a new startup going with its first product. This is especially true with products like consumer oriented web sites and small scale B2B web sites where Beta versions of products just need to show utility and demonstrate usage in order to be successful. These startups can build, launch and support their products with just one or very few developers.

And the software guru thrives in this environment. They can quickly select and configure development environments, choose frameworks, and design the site. Software designs, documentation, and testing go out the window in lieu of features and speed. Bugs are easy to fix. Design mistakes can be corrected with few consequences. And if something is just too laborious for the developer, he can help sway the priorities to other features.

So is this developer ready to be a CTO? Part 2 coming next week.
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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.