Find out how to use tech to deliver (not distract from) business value in this CTO podcast featuring Vikas Gupta, CTO at Choco (a digital platform connecting suppliers to their restaurants), who previously held senior engineering roles at Uber and Dropbox. Listen find out :

• ⚖️ How to balance product and platform initiatives
• 🔍What the 5 dimensions are for evaluating a language
• 🎩 CTPO vs 👷CTO + 🤠CPO
• How to determine ROI when migrating from legacy
• + Why he chose his tech stack

Listen here

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BROUGHT TO YOU BY: Sastrify

Sastrify is a software as a service (SaaS) procurement solution that automates the process of buying and managing SaaS products. It is an established partner of the Alphalist CTO Community, providing procurement, IT, and finance teams with a centralized platform to streamline their SaaS procurement process. Their value proposition includes reducing SaaS spend by up to 35% and saving up to 20 hours each month. Sastrify's procurement experts negotiate the best terms with SaaS vendors, such as Miro, Asana, or Salesforce, for both existing contracts and upcoming contract renewals. Several leading companies, including Westwing, Adidas Runtastic, and Sennder, use Sastrify to solve their procurement problems and quickly extend their runways. Sastrify will also have a booth in the Finance Forward area at the OMR festival, and interested parties can schedule a meeting with the Sastrify team by emailing [email protected]. Additionally, you can find case studies and more information on how Sastrify works at www.sastrify.com/alphalist.

Vikas Gupta, the CTO of Choco, is focused on bringing the fragmented hospitality industry to the digital space, connecting suppliers with restaurants and institutions to place orders. Vikas explains the current order process of SMS, WhatsApp, voicemail, and email and how Choco is using data to automate the process for chefs so they can focus on cooking. He also touches on how front-of-the-house processes are already digitized, but back-of-the-house processes still need to be further developed to reduce food waste and create sustainability in the food supply chain.

Vikas Gupta shares his journey in tech from his early days learning to code in Pascal, his experience in Silicon Valley, and the journey that ultimately led his to joining . He recounts his experience programming games and designing board games, as well as the challenges of programming in mobile environments. Vikas also shares why he left Silicon Valley to join Dropbox and eventually , and the drive to make a positive change in the world with the food sustainability space.

We explore the stack and decisions behind Choco. We discuss why they chose their tech stack (AWS serverless architecture with NodeJS, React) And why he regrets not using cross platform development earlier. (They are migrating to Flutter now). We also discuss the pros and cons of monoliths versus microservices and why Flutter was the right decision for them. Vikas shares the importance of collaboration between web engineers and native engineers in order to create a platform that allows teams to move quickly and build effectively.

We discuss how to balance the needs of the user, the time available, and the people available when making technology decisions. We explore how leaders can create an environment conducive to having conversations around technology decisions, and how to define a timeline for a transition to a new technology. We also discuss the idea of creating Excellence Days and using 80-20 to allow engineers to focus on technical topics and platform improvements. Finally, we talk about using coloured flags - so you know when the house is on fire and you need to drop everything and fix it.

We explore the importance of quantifying the value of legacy code and how to present that data to leadership. We approach the challenge of overhauling an entire architecture and how to align leadership on delivering business value. We discuss the process of creating a roadmap and coordinating between product, sales, and engineering teams - plus how to be flexible while maintaining focus. Finally, we look at the importance of eye-level collaboration to challenge each other in order to achieve the best outcome.

Become a better CTO/CPTO with these insights from David Gebhardt, CTO (and former CPTO) of mobile.de (Germany’s largest car vehicle marketplace). Originally the Head of Tech, David evolved into CPTO, eventually leading the 400-strong Product+Tech teams before evolving business needs led him to bring on a CPO and go back to being ‘just’ the CTO (“only” 250 people). He shares why in this great CTO podcast.

Listen to find out:

• Why he went from CTO to CTPO and back 🤔
• Self-Efficacy as CTO ✅: How to be effective and FEEL effective
• Where innovation 💡 comes from (+ mobile.de’s Innovation Days Format)
• Why PHP isn’t all that bad (not in his current stack.. he shares what is why) Listen here BROUGHT TO YOU BY instaffo.

About David Gebhardt:

David is the CTO and member of the management team at mobile.de, the #1 German automotive marketplace, serving millions of users monthly and more than 39,000 German car dealerships.David is an impact driven leader at the interface of technology, product and business with 15+ years at IBM, Ernst & Young (EY), eBay and Adevinta, honored among the Capital 40 under 40 (2022). He is a strategic thinker with a pragmatic can-do attitude, enjoying trust-based and to-the-point interactions in cross-functional, diverse teams (ENTJ). David actively supports initiatives and organizations that foster equality and diversity in our society as well as digital education. Outside of work, David enjoys time with his family and is an ambitious endurance athlete, who finished several marathon and an Ironman.

TIMESTAMPS (approx) (00:00) Intro to David and mobile.de (05:52) David's Nerd Journey (07:20) Impact, Community and Building Websites for Rock Bands (09:15) Delphi, jQuery and PHP (12:16) Tech Stack at Mobile.de (18:29) The Role of CTO and CPTO (19:18) Innovation and its Source (22:29) Innovation Days (24:16) Going from CTO to CTPO and Back (35:47) Self-Efficacy as CTO (36:09) Strategies for Increasing Effectiveness (39:03) Why it's important to appreciate and reflect on achievements (40:18) CTO Time Management with timeboxing and meeting priorities (43:00) Inbox Zero and Creating Order in Communication Channels (47:44) ChatGPT (49:28) Home Automation: The Typical CTO Pet Project (51:25) Reflections on Career and Personal Growth

Quotes:###

Inbox zero - in my definition - is not that I need to reply in five seconds. Inbox zero is my goal for the end of the day and end of the week. For me it's really: delete, archive, follow up or answer immediately. ’” - David Gebhardt, CTO of mobile.de, alphalist CTO podcast #95

About our sponsor

Instaffo

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While classic job portals, in-house active sourcing and headhunters give you the headache of paying upfront, having high setup efforts and dealing with 30% hiring fees, with Instaffo this now history for you.

As an alphalist listener, you get to enjoy the Instaffo recruiting platform absolutely free until you find that perfect hire.

Already over 2.000 tech talents and companies are connected weekly on instaffo, so what are you waiting for? Go to https://instaffo.com/cto to get started.

Empower your team with the right type of autonomy 🚀 as we define the balance in this CTO podcast with Andy Walker, who has years of experience leadings teams at Skyscanner and Google. After 30 years in tech, Andy finally has the time to share what his hard won insights about tech leadership. You will enjoy his nuanced approach to autonomous teams, team size and work-life balance.
Listen to find out: Why the more senior you are, the less decisions you should make 🤔 How to give the right amount of autonomy by career stage 🧑‍💻 (and how to have the right conversations about it 💬) How to empower 🚀and support an autonomous team What is the ideal team size?🍕 (What happens beyond Dunbar’s Law?) What motivates your team? 🤗 (SPOILER: Autonomy, Mastery🌟, and Purpose ala Dan Pink)

• why Daily Active Users is the Wrong Metric 🫣

Listen here

BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and codecentric

About Andy Walker:

Andy has over 30 years experience as a software engineer, leader and coach. A ten year veteran of Google where he worked on Maps, Search and Ads and previously at Netscape and Sony. Recently he’s been focused on how to create an environment for teams to do their best work and coaching leaders to enable this. He’s currently writing about the lessons he has learned about working with people and doing ad hoc coaching and the occasional conference talk.

TIMESTAMPS (approx) (00:00) Introduction to the Alphalist Podcast (02:06) Introducing Guest: Andy Walker (02:38) Andy's Current Daily Life (03:27) What is Autonomy (04:37) The Balance of Autonomy (04:47) Autonomy in Parenting (06:28) The Importance of Autonomy in Companies (07:24) Communicate to Discover the Right Amount of Autonomy (08:15) Overview of Autonomy Across the Company (10:05) How to Align in Autonomous Teams (10:31) Progression of Autonomy from Junior to Senior (12:01) How to do Autonomy (12:51) Role of Leadership Skills in Autonomy (13:20) The Importance of Communication in Autonomy (14:01) Good Leaders Know How To Apply Leadership Best Practices (15:56) 3-Question Smell Test for Leaders (18:08) Why the best leaders make the least decisions (20:00) Who makes decisions in Multi-Disciplinary Teams (22:28) Bad Managers and Micromanagement (27:20) Effective Teams (30:26) What motivates people (inspired by Dan Pink) (31:03) How Autonomy Motivates (31:19) How Purpose Motivates (33:35) How Mastery Motivates (35:52) Ideal Size for Autonomous Teams (38:38) Ideal Team Size Varies (40:20) Work-Life Balance (41:16) Rapid Fire Questions (42:18) Biggest Mistake Leaders Make With Autonomy (42:32) Why Daily Active Users Could Be a Bad Metric (44:10) Best Prompt to Improve Work-Life Balance (48:00) Advice for New Leaders (48:18) Advice to Younger Self

Quotes:###

And when we're talking about autonomy within companies, you should understand that you're trying to give every person the most autonomy they can handle at a given point in time ..... And so what you're looking at saying is how much autonomy can you handle right now? And how do we put you in a situation where the bits where you don't have autonomy over what you're learning from so that your ability to tackle larger and more difficult things grows over time? And what tends to happen with autonomy as we don't have that conversation? So when somebody feels that they don't have appropriate decision-making power, they turn around and say, ‘You're not giving me autonomy ‘like it's necessarily a bad thing rather than the better conversation of ‘what level autonomy should you have at this point and how can we help you grow that level of autonomy’” - Andy Walker,alphalist CTO podcast #91

One of my rules of thumb as to whether I'm functioning as a leader was,” How many decisions do I have to make?” And my goal is to never have to make a single decision. This is a futile goal, because that's never going to happen. But it makes me think about how do I push the decision to the lowest part of the hierarchy as possible, so that the people closest to the work are able to have agency over what they're doing. And this should be business as usual. And in fact, if you're working on something, and you're responsible for getting it done, you should have decision-making power over 99 percent of the things in front of you. The interesting case is the edge case for that 1 percent where what you're working on may be mutually exclusive to another team. ” - Andy Walker,alphalist CTO podcast #91

About our sponsors

WorkGenius

Tired of sifting through countless resumes and struggling to find the right te...

Lead a more humane and effective organisation with inspiration from Matthew Skelton, co-author of Team Topologies. Inspired by system design💠, cybernetics🤖 and neuroscience 🧠, Team Topologies allows CTOs to structure their teams in a more humane way that reduces cognitive load 🤯 while increasing user value 🎯. Listen to find out:

• Value Flow💦: What, why and how to find it
• Team Topologies🪢: The 3 team types,1 grouping, and 3 interaction modes
• Why Continuous Stewardship 🛞 is important in software
• Decoupling🧩 in Time: Amazon’s Secret Source +Why Team Topologies is like Pilates 🏋️ for your company goals🦸

Listen here

BROUGHT TO YOU BY Shopify

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro (00:56) Welcome (02:11) Matthew Skelton's Personal Nerd Journey (06:44) System Thinking for Effective Humane Organisations (08:18) Team Cognitive Load (08:48) Team Interaction Modes (09:59) The Complexity and Chaos of Human Nature in Organisational Design (10:31) The Influence of Neuroscience on Team Topologies (13:52) How team topologies is influenced by cybernetics, neuroscience and systems (15:40) Getting Started with Team Topologies (16:45) Continuously Adapting (17:55) Then vs. Now: Structuring around Value Flows (22:24) Continuous Stewardship: Responsibility of Software Orgs (26:03) How to have everyone work together (26:45) Workshopping to find Value Flow (30:04) Value Flow: Work Backwards from User Needs, Wardley Maps and Existing Team Structure (33:49) Decoupling in Time and why you become less agile when you rely on PMs (38:30) Amazon's Secret to Scaling and Efficiency (39:58) 4 TEAM TYPES (40:23) Stream Aligned Team (42:54) Enabling Team (43:38) Complicated Subsystem Team (44:34) Platform - grouping of teams (45:34) 3 INTERACTION MODES (45:42) Collaboration (45:49) Facilitation (45:57) X-as-a-Service (46:08) How the Dynamic nature and adaptation to change is the Secret Sauce of Team Topologies (49:28) Ditch Hierarchy for Better Value Flow (54:26) Team Topologies as Pilates for Your Organization (1:01:05) Have the confidence to listen: To Yourself and Others

About Matthew Skelton#

Matthew Skelton is co-author of the award-winning and ground-breaking book Team Topologies, and Founder & Principal at Conflux. The Team Topologies book was rated one of the ‘Best product management books of all time’ by Book Authority and is widely used by organisations worldwide to transform the way they deliver value. Matthew is one of the foremost leaders in modern organisational dynamics for fast flow, drawing on Team Topologies and related practices to support organisations with transformation towards a sustainable fast flow of value and true business agility.

About our sponsor

Shopify

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