Talk to CTO: how to avoid getting into management dilemma | Q recommendation

In recent years , Enterprise digital transformation to CTO They have brought new opportunities and challenges .

In the traditional sense ,CTO It's usually the technology strategist and executor , Lead the technical team to passively provide technical and service support to the business department .

But under the urging of digitalization ,CTO The status of has changed significantly . International software suppliers Cyara and Sapio Research By consulting Australia and other regions 1,000 Name business and IT The views of business decision makers , Identify some of the latest trends in the field of digital transformation . When asked who is driving the digital transformation ,37% Of respondents thought it was CTO/CIO;28% People mentioned IT The leader ;23% People say yes CEO. It's not hard to see. , As the technology leader ,CTO It plays an important role in the digital transformation of enterprises , But it also means CTO The burden on my shoulders is heavier .

CTO Team management dilemma

To better drive the digital transformation ,CTO Not just technology 、 Infrastructure construction and IT Operation and maintenance , More attention should be paid to how to promote business change 、 Drive big data into insight , And through leading the team , Cooperate with various business departments , Reinvent the process for digitalization 、 Mechanism and guarantee .

Based on this ,CTO Must have three abilities ： Technical ability 、 Business collaboration ability and team management ability .

Technical ability is needless to say ,CTO As the guider of the company's Technological Development , Determine the technical development plan of the company , We must have a broad enough technical vision . Just like expenditure treasure CTO What kongfanyong said ,“ Although you don't need to be proficient in all kinds of technologies , But you have to get involved , Know something about , Development trend of various technical fields , Main stream 、 Understand the application scenarios of non mainstream technologies . Know what technology to apply in what scenarios , What is the scale of business development and what technical reserves should be made in advance .”

Business collaboration capability requirements CTO Provide things for business needs , And bring new business models to the business through technological innovation , Become the source of performance , Even exceed business expectations , Create additional revenue for the enterprise . Yixin group CTO Xiang Jiangxu also said in an interview ,“ Let technology really support the business , Then enable the business and even lead the business , It's an eternal topic .”

Talking about team management , Ding Xiang Yuan CTO Fan Kai said ,CTO Be good at managing the R & D team , Control the progress of R & D work , To be able to , Advance gradually and entrench oneself at every step , Complete the R & D work of the company's products in good time . Besides CTO Also be good at training R & D echelons , Establish a centripetal force within the R & D team 、 Open communication and learning organizational culture . Let the R & D team have self-learning ability 、 Self cultivation ability 、 Self building capacity .

In different enterprises , Business is different ,CTO When working with the business , It needs to be flexible , Can't generalize , But team management is all CTO Must have .

Launched in an organization 《2020 year IT Industry project management survey report 》 It shows that , have only 5.69% Of the respondents were in a team smaller than 3 people ;38.71% Of the respondents' teams are concentrated in 3-10 people ; The rest of the respondents are in teams of 10 More people . And usually ,IT Roles in the team include project managers 、 Architects 、 Back end developers 、 Front end developers 、 Testers 、 Operation and maintenance personnel, etc .

Visible for CTO Come on , Build a team 、 The process of integrating talents for various posts and cultivating talents , It takes a lot of energy , And once something goes wrong in one of them , It will also directly affect the progress of digital transformation .

First , If the team is not successful , The project will not be delivered on schedule due to insufficient manpower , In the long term , The technological power of the enterprise has been questioned , The core competitiveness in the industry will also be gradually lost . And this among them ,CTO Take a lot of responsibility .

secondly , After the team is formed , The cultivation of follow-up talents is also very critical . The rapid change of software technology , Need to rely on IT People are constantly accumulating on a daily basis to improve their skills , But most of the time , Software project time is tight 、 task , Developers don't have much energy to think about , Can only continue “ Repeat the wheel ”, To meet the requirements of rapid delivery . To put it bluntly , Most developers are faced with tasks , Only simple execution is left , Enthusiasm for work has been eroded , Learning time is squeezed , It is difficult to steadily improve the ability , As a result, the growth of team ability can not keep up with the requirements of digital transformation .

Talent training is not up to expectations , Even if the project can be completed on schedule , Quality and safety are also difficult to guarantee , Sometimes , Even need to CTO Personally guide the development details . In this way ,CTO Will fall into a huge 、 Miscellaneous team management , It is difficult to have time and energy to pay attention to the development of enterprise business and cutting-edge technology , Not to mention making technology strategies for enterprises to enable business development , Give Way IT The Department has become the tractor in the digital transformation of enterprises .

Facing a series of challenges of team management ,CTO How to solve it ？

How to solve CTO The difficulty ？

One side , It is necessary to improve the quality of talents . In the Digital Context ,IT Departments should play a greater role in the digital transformation of enterprises , It is essential to cultivate digital talents . Issued by China Academy of information and communication 《 Research Report on employment impact of digital economy 》 Pointed out that ,2020 In, China's digital talent gap was close to 1100 ten thousand , With the digital promotion of the whole industry , A wider range of digital talents are needed , The talent demand gap is still widening .

It means , A large number of enterprises are facing the problem of digital talent shortage , If the team can cultivate a group of digital talents , It will surely make enterprises one step faster in the digital transformation .

On the other hand , Enterprises need to be liberated IT Productivity , Simplify the software development process , And improve the speed and quality of software development . This can be seen from the former Japanese Alibaba CTO Tang Zhengrong talked about CTO Should have the efficiency thinking explanation , By improving the workflow , Promote digital management , Use automation instead of labor to improve internal efficiency . Efficient thinking makes CTO It can no longer be limited to the management of software development , Free up more time and energy to care about enterprise business and research cutting-edge technologies , So as to formulate a technology strategy that is more suitable for the enterprise business .

Whether it's training digital talents , Or liberation IT Productivity , The key is to choose the right tool . Why do you say that ？ There are two reasons . First of all , The right tools can make IT Team members from “ Repeat the wheel ” Free up , Have more time and energy to focus on software top-level architecture design and learn new technologies , Improve your ability in all aspects , Develop to digital talents ; second , By driving development process change , To improve the speed and quality of software development , Achieve liberation IT The purpose of productivity .

Obviously , Use of appropriate tools , Yes CTO The management team is crucial . If there is demand, there is market , At present, relevant tools have appeared in the industry , And began to practice . As niguangnan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of engineering, said ,“ today , The importance of software is self-evident , The development of software engineering should also keep pace with the times , Instead of staying in some old ideas 、 Old specification 、 On the old platform . In the near future , Some innovations in software engineering in China's software industry , for example ‘ Low code development platform ’、‘ Software robot ’ wait , Is worthy of support and encouragement .”

The low code development platform and software robot mentioned by academician niguangnan , All through visual development , Change the traditional software development method of manually writing code , Software development can be accomplished by dragging and dropping components , Standardization 、 Automated processes can improve the speed of software development at the same time , Guarantee quality .

But I have to mention , At present, low code platforms with high popularity still have their own limitations . A company CTO Recently accepted InfoQ During the interview, we talked about , They are interested in large-scale 、 Evaluate complex projects , The efficiency of application development on low code platform is not even as high as that of manual writing by developers , It can also be seen that low code platforms are more applicable to the front end and some specific scenarios . From this further analysis, it is concluded that , The difficulty and focus of current software development is actually at the back end .

So far , Who has broken through the technical difficulties of back-end full-automatic development , It solves the problem of the present CTO Management team dilemma . Recently launched by feisuan SoFlu Take software robot as an example , It claims to have a fully automated back-end development platform 、 Front end automatic development platform 、 Automatic test platform 、 Automatic operation and maintenance platform , Covering the entire lifecycle of software development , It allows developers to realize “ One person one project , Ten is worth a hundred ” To improve the efficiency of . Once helped PetroChina use 9 A normal programmer +5 individual SoFlu The robot is 45 It is necessary to complete the traditional development mode within days 27 People spend 300 System reconfiguration of large e-commerce platform completed in several days ,“SoFlu Software robots let us complete an impossible task , Let us have more confidence , Truly realize independent development .” The person in charge of the project of PetroChina said .

Combined with cases , Let's see , Use a fully automated tool platform , For the developers themselves , They don't have to spend a lot of time maintaining code and technical debt , So as to have more time and energy to innovate 、 Learning new skills , It has solved the current dilemma of talent training .

besides , The full-automatic tool platform can deposit the knowledge and experience of enterprise software development in the platform , It also means that CTO The whole software development life cycle can be managed through the platform , Get out of the huge and complicated team management , More time and energy to focus on enterprise business and cutting-edge technologies , Develop a technology strategy that is more in line with the development of the enterprise , Give better play to yourself and IT The role of departments in the digital transformation of enterprises .

junction language

Now , The development of technology is changing with each passing day , Enterprises CTO As the technology leader , Only by actively embracing innovative technology , Rational use of tools , In order to better improve the team management ability , Give full play to the value of yourself and the team , Let enterprises maintain innovation vitality under the guidance of correct technology strategy , Take a quick step in the fierce business competition .