The Role of the Chief Product Officer
It’s become more common for product leaders to have a seat in the C-suite. However, the role of the Chief Product Officer (CPO) is still commonly misunderstood, with most organisations feeling a large overlap between the Chief Technology Officer (CTO). Can they both co-exist to drive maximum value? It’s worth taking a closer look at the difference between the two related roles to see why they differ.
The CPO and CTO should share the same goal: To build and deliver the best possible experiences for customers and subsequent value for the company.
In small growth companies, the CTO may have complete ownership of design and development teams, larger organisations this tends to be broken down into multiple leadership roles. The CPO is brought in to handle the increased complexity that comes with multiple product lines for different customer segments. In companies where both roles exist, the line between CTO & CPO can become very blurry.
So, it is helpful to explore and define the specific responsibilities to set meaningful boundaries between the two roles. This helps avoid unnecessary overlap and increased efficiency. It also improves collaboration between the two broader organisations.
The Why vs The How
Brian de Haaff wrote about how the CTO is responsible for the “how” of the product — the strategic approach to development and delivery. The CTO determines how the team will use technology to improve products and services. On the other hand, the CPO is responsible for the “why” of the product — the strategic approach to what will be built. The CPO makes sure the product direction is serving the overall company vision and adjusts as necessary to changing conditions.
Know your customer
The CPO studies customers and the market and looks for what direction the product can and should take in the future. The end goal remains to be building a better customer experience and helping the product teams truly enjoy what they do. The CPO represents the customer internally, communicating learning through research and analysis, sharing insights with marketing and sales teams, and encouraging the product team to conduct continuous customer conversations.
The CTO studies technology solutions to make recommendations for enterprise architecture and how work should best get done. The CTO gets to explore new technologies and approaches IF it aids the product performance when solving customer problems. The CTO must understand the customer too — although they often rely on the CPO’s research and learnings. The CTO must also apply their technical know-how to ensure technology applications reflect the way customers want to interact with the product.
While both roles are focused on better serving the customer, the CPO owns the why, what, and when while the CTO stays responsible for the how.
Data Driven Leadership
The CPO looks at data from a product experience standpoint. They track a wide variety of KPIs to measure how well the company is doing to deliver such revenue, customer growth, engagement or retention. They also look internally to track progress against the product plan and team goals. And at a strategic level, they often must look across product lines and portfolios at how well many products are tracking towards the overall vision.
The CTO looks at data from a product performance standpoint. They want to know how well the product does what it is supposed to do. They also want to look at customer interactions to understand how the product is being used.
