Technology strategy
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Sets a technology direction the business can bet on, and revisits it when reality moves.
Course coverage
← All career guides10 of 10 skills52 of 52 courses
Executive and leadership
Chief Technology Officer
Owns technology direction for the whole organization — architecture, engineering organization, spend, and risk — and defends those choices to the business.
Skill coverage
100%
Course coverage
100%
Skill coverage shows how much of the role's capability map already has a published course. Course coverage shows how much of the mapped course pipeline for this role has shipped.
- Role skills
- 10
- Published coverage
- 10
- Relevant courses
- 52
Capability map
Skills
Importance describes how central each capability is to the role. Course coverage shows where you can build the skill in the current OpenSkills catalog.
Technology strategy: 7 more courses
Architecture governance: 3 more courses
Build versus buy: 2 more courses
Technology risk: 3 more courses
Organization design: 5 more courses
Engineering effectiveness: 1 more course
Technical talent strategy: 1 more course
Board communication: 1 more course
Technology budgeting: 4 more courses
Chief Technology Officer capability map
- Chief Technology Officer
- Technology direction
- Engineering organization
- Executive leadership
01
Technology direction
4 capabilities
Architecture governance
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Owns architectural direction and the standards teams build against, without designing every system.
Build versus buy
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Decides what to build, buy, or outsource, and owns the consequences of each choice.
Technology risk
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Names the technology risks worth carrying and the ones worth spending to remove.
02
Engineering organization
3 capabilities
Organization design
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Shapes team boundaries, ownership, and interfaces so the org can deliver what the strategy needs.
Engineering effectiveness
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Uses delivery, quality, and developer-experience signals to steer engineering across teams.
Technical talent strategy
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Plans hiring, leveling, and progression so capability arrives before it is needed.
03
Executive leadership
3 capabilities
Board communication
Importance: Essential (5 of 5)
Explains technology bets, risk, and spend to boards and executives in terms they can act on.
Technology budgeting
Importance: Very important (4 of 5)
Plans and defends the technology budget across capital, run cost, and headcount.
Vendor management
Importance: Important (3 of 5)
Coordinates external suppliers, contracts, and deliverables.
Learning path
Relevant courses
Core foundations
The concepts this role is built on.
- AI Strategy for Organizations
- Board Communication for Technology Leaders
- Build Versus Buy Decisions
- Engineering Levels and Promotion Calibration
- Engineering MetricsFree
- Engineering Organization Design
- Engineering Productivity
- Engineering Team Topologies
- Enterprise Architecture FundamentalsFree
- Executive Reporting and Dashboard DesignFree
- Hiring Software Engineers
- IT Budgeting and Capital Planning
- Technical Decision-Making
- Technical Due Diligence
- Technical LeadershipFree
- Technical Stakeholder CommunicationFree
- Technical StrategyFree
- Technology Architecture
- Technology Procurement
- Technology Risk Management
- Technology RoadmappingFree
- Technology Total Cost of Ownership
- Technology Vendor Management
Supporting knowledge
Adjacent knowledge that improves day-to-day judgment.
- AI Governance and ComplianceFree
- Architecture Decision Records
- Blameless Engineering Culture
- Cloud Cost Management
- Cloud Cost Optimization
- Competitive Intelligence and Positioning
- Developer ExperienceFree
- Digital Transformation Leadership
- Engineering Management FundamentalsFree
- Engineering Performance Management
- FinOps FundamentalsFree
- Inclusive Hiring for Engineering Teams
- IT Operating Models
- Mentoring Engineers
- Organizational Change Management for Technology Adoption
- Outcome-Based Roadmapping and OKRs
- Project Budgeting
- Risk Registers and Contingency Planning
- Security GovernanceFree
- Software Architecture Fundamentals
- Solution Architecture
- Sourcing and Outsourcing Strategy
- Stakeholder Mapping and Influence
- Technical Debt vs. Feature Prioritization
- Unit Economics for Cloud Services
Specializations
Deeper paths for particular environments or directions.
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