Chief
Technology
Officer (СТО)

AI Enabled

Many CTOs get stuck in technical operations. We will examine what your work at the C-suite level actually entails and how to design your role so that the focus is on the future of the company, rather than on fixing past mistakes.

What will be covered in the session:

• Analysis of the differences between a CTO and a VP of Engineering: where engineering ends and business begins.
• CTO competency matrix: audit your skills in finance, policy, and strategy.

Practical exercise: designing your own role profile for your company's current needs.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• What types of CTOs are there and which one does your company need?
• How to evaluate your effectiveness if you no longer have commits and closed sprints?
• What should a CTO spend 80% of their time on to help the company grow?

Tools: CTO competency profile and personal KPI dashboard for technology leaders.

Your success as a CTO depends on your ability to make top management your allies. We will learn how to manage management expectations, speak the language of profit, and defend technology initiatives before the board of directors.

What will be covered in the session:

• Stakeholder mapping (CEO, CFO, Product): identifying their real pain points and goals.
• Upward management techniques: how to argue for the need for reforms so that they are listened to.

Practice:

• Preparing for negotiations with the CEO / C-level colleagues.
• Holding a meeting to manage your manager's expectations.
• Using AI to prepare for negotiations with stakeholders (prompts).

Answers to what questions and what tools you will receive:

• How to make your CEO "happy" without sacrificing the quality of the architecture?
• How to present information about risks and failures in a way that maintains business trust?

Tools: Stakeholder influence map and script for preparing for a crucial meeting with C-level executives.

A CTO manages not people, but people management systems. We will analyse how to build rules of the game for team leads and heads so that employee motivation and development occur without your involvement.

What will be covered in the session:

• Management through indirect reports: how to convey culture to hundreds of engineers.
• Building systems for motivation, development, and loyalty control at the department level.

Workshop: automating people management processes and using AI to assess the state of departments.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to ensure the quality of team leads' work with teams without personal intervention?
• What systemic rules need to be implemented to minimise the "bus factor" in key units?

Tools: A set of rules for managing people in the tech department and a guide to conducting skip-level meetings.

Strategy is what distinguishes a director from an executor. We will learn how to conduct in-depth strategic analysis and turn its results into a vector for the development of the entire company.

What will be covered in the session:

• The anatomy of strategy: types of strategies and their applicability depending on the market.
• Strategic analysis tools: PEST, SWOT and other landscape assessment methods.

Practical exercise: choosing a strategy based on data analysis and business goals.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How does strategy differ from a long-term plan and why is this critical for CTOs?
• How to conduct strategic analysis so that it does not turn into a formal document?

Tools: Strategic analysis framework and corporate strategy template.

A key area of responsibility for CTOs. We will learn how to cascade the company's overall strategy onto technology, taking into account current trends and the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence.

What will be covered in the session:

• Forming a tech strategy: from analysing the current stack to choosing the target architecture.
• Taking trends and AI into account: how to integrate modern technologies into a long-term development plan.

Practice: cascading strategy down to the level of specific implementation and deployment steps.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to justify the choice of stack based on strategic analysis rather than "trends"?
• How to cascade a technical strategy so that every developer in the department understands it?

Tools: Technology strategy template and algorithm for implementing technical goals (Execution Plan).

Information security at the CTO level is about risk management and business survival. We will learn how to translate technical threats into monetary terms and embed security into development without turning it into a "brake" for the product.

What will be covered in the session:

• Asset diagnostics: how to determine what is truly critical to protect in a company and set priorities.
• DevSecOps approach: integrating security into development and operation pipelines as a quality standard.
• IT security and AI: new attack vectors using neural networks and how AI helps monitor threats.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to prove to management the need for an information security budget by explaining threats through business consequences?
• How to build an information security strategy focused on results rather than "paper" overinsurance?

Tools: Information security strategy template and map of the company's critical digital assets.

Finance is the universal language of C-level executives. We will cover the basics that will allow you to not only look at spreadsheets, but also make management decisions based on financial indicators and analyse them using neural networks.

What will be covered in the session:

• The three pillars of reporting: analysis of P&L (profit and loss), Cash Flow and Balance Sheet through the eyes of a technical director.
• Marginality analysis: how your work directly affects the financial health of the company.
• AI in finance: workshop on using LLM to analyse complex financial reports and detect anomalies.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive?

• How to speak the same language as the CEO and CFO so that your proposals appear financially sound?
• What financial metrics in IT are leading indicators of problems?

Tools: Glossary of financial terms for CTOs and checklist for analysing financial reports using AI.

The budget is the fuel for your strategy. We will learn how to integrate the IT department into the company's overall financial model, turning the budget from a "spending plan" into a tool for implementing large-scale technological changes.

What will be covered in the lesson:

• The budgeting process: from collecting wish lists to tough defence in front of the board of directors.
• Budget as a control tool: how to use numbers to manage the effectiveness of departments.
• AI assistant in planning: how neural networks speed up calculations, forecast infrastructure costs, and help prepare justifications.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to protect technical debt and R&D expenses so that they are not cut at the first sign of a crisis?
• How to use the budget to implement a technical strategy, rather than just to "keep the lights on"?

Tools: Annual IT budget model and prompts for AI cost forecasting.

Any CTO decision must pay for itself. We will analyse how to build convincing financial models (unit economics, P&L) so that each of your actions is transparent to the business and financially profitable.

What will be covered in the lesson:

• Unit economics in IT: how to calculate the cost of a single user, transaction, or feature.
• Scenario modelling: comparing the financial implications of different architectural and management decisions.
• Justification of investments: how to calculate ROI (return on investment) and TCO (total cost of ownership) for complex systems.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to prove to shareholders that hiring 10 more people or changing the stack is profitable in the long run?
• How to quantify the risks of technical failures in terms of actual profit losses?

Tools: Tech solution unit economics calculator and project financial model template.

The CTO is the co-author of the product. We will analyse how to understand product metrics, when to compromise on quality for speed (TTM), and when to insist on reliability.

What will be covered in the session:

• Product strategy: how the CTO participates in product decisions and prioritising hypotheses. How to work with the product manager.
• Technology and innovation: when it is appropriate to implement ML models or LLM components in a product for real metric growth, and when a reliable heuristic solution is sufficient.
• AI prototyping: how tools like replit or v0 help you quickly test hypotheses without burdening development.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to effectively balance "quick results" with investments in the technical foundation?
• When does it make sense to embed AI solutions into a product so that they bring benefits and are not just "hype"?

Tools: Tech vs Product balance matrix and ML hypothesis assessment checklist.

Your sustainability as a CTO depends on the quality of your subordinates (Heads, VPs). We will analyse how to grow leaders internally and how to effectively hire top talent from the market in conditions of staff shortages and AI development.

What will be covered in the session:

• Combating the Bus Factor: building a talent pool and developing successors for key positions.
• Profiling top talent: features of executive assessment — how to understand that a person is "up to the task" of being a Head of...
• AI in recruitment and development: using tools to assess potential and form development plans.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to develop a key employee if their only next step is your position?
• How to hire managers from the market so that they do not disrupt the existing culture?

Tools: Talent pool matrix and guide to interviewing top managers.

The structure of the tech department determines the speed of product delivery. We will analyse how to design an organisational structure that minimises dependencies between teams and allows the company to grow without losing manageability.

What will be covered in the session:

• Comparative analysis: pros and cons of functional, divisional, and matrix structures in IT.
• Task-oriented design: how to try out different models on your department and find the best option for the current stage of your business.
• AI in organisational design: using neural networks to model communication flows and find bottlenecks in the structure.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to understand that the current structure is "slowing down" development, and when is it time to reorganise?
• What needs to be done to make the new organisational structure really work?

Tools: Organisational structure design matrix and schedule for implementing changes in the technical department.

Business processes (BP) are what turn chaos into predictable results. We will look at how to build processes so that they help engineers create, rather than stifle them with bureaucracy.

What will be covered in the lesson:

• Process vision: how to see BP in your daily routine, describe them "as is" and design "to be".
• Implementation and adaptation: how to make a process a living tool that is followed by the entire team.
• AI vs Leader: can modern neural networks take over the functions of controlling and describing processes?

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• Where are business processes critically important, and where do they kill innovation and flexibility?
• How to build BP so that they scale along with staff growth?

Tools: Repository of key BP for CTOs and checklist for implementing a new process into engineering culture.

The world is changing faster than we can update our regulations. We will learn how to find "outdated" areas in your processes and optimise them using modern approaches and AI tools.

What will be covered in the session:

• Optimisation methods: identifying inefficiencies, duplication of functions, and information gaps.
• Process Mining: introduction to an approach that allows you to see the actual paths of tasks through system logs.
• AI analytics: searching for growth points and automating routine process stages using neural networks.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to define optimisation goals and criteria so as not to "fix what isn't broken"?
• How to involve the team in the improvement process so that they themselves suggest optimisations?

Tools: Process loss search map and improvement prioritisation algorithm.

At the CTO level, you cannot see every line of code, but you must see the "health" of the entire system. We will build a pyramid of metrics that links the work of each engineer to the company's financial results.

What will be covered in the session:

• Metrics pyramid: from technical (DORA, build speed) to business metrics (feature cost, churn rate).
• Decomposition: how to cascade goals from top to bottom correctly so that metrics do not turn into a "stick system".
• AI control: analysing metrics through neural networks — can we trust tools to make management decisions?

Answers to what questions and what tools you will get:

• How to choose 3-5 key metrics for your level so you don't drown in operational data?
• How to see the relationship between technical solutions and business profit indicators?

Tools: CTO dashboard template and algorithm for building a departmental metrics pyramid.

A topic familiar to every engineer, but one that requires a different perspective from a CTO. We will examine how to make decisions about purchasing or developing software from a strategic point of view, rather than just a technological one.

What will be covered in the session:

• Make vs Buy: an in-depth analysis — when to develop your own, and when to engage contractors or ready-made SaaS solutions.
• Infrastructure evolution: issues of scalability, security, and total cost of ownership (TCO).
• AI for engineers: the use of AI in development (Copilots) — prospects, risks and impact on performance.

What questions will be answered and what tools will you receive:

• How to avoid falling into the trap of "undocumented self-writing" that is impossible to maintain?
• How to choose infrastructure that won't become a bottleneck after a year of rapid growth?

Tools: Make vs Buy decision matrix and checklist for evaluating AI-based engineering tools.

The CTO manages budgets, and a significant portion of them goes to external partners. We will learn how to select contractors, negotiate the best terms, and strictly control the quality of their work.

What will be covered in the session:

• Selection and contracting: main types of contracts (T&M, Fixed Price) and how to choose the right one for your task.
• Relationship management: how to build a partnership so that the contractor is motivated to achieve your results.
• Procurement control: how to set up a system for monitoring the quality of external teams' work so you don't pay for "air".

Questions answered and tools provided:

• How to choose contractors so that you don't become a hostage to a single vendor (vendor lock-in)?
• How to control remote teams and outsourced production at the C-level?

Tools: Contractor evaluation template and contract performance audit checklist.