Leadership line, station 4 of 4
Leading a Tech Department: Head of Engineering to CTO
Run technology for a whole organisation: strategy, organisation design, budgets and vendors, risk and security governance, AI adoption, and the board and executive team.
- 7lessons
- 4.5 hto read and do
- Advancedlevel
- 7podcast episodes
- 2checked exercises
Tools you'll use in this course
The lessons open these with a template ready. They work for your own job too, no course needed.
About this course
Heads of department and CTOs lead leaders. Their work is setting technology strategy, designing the organisation and its operating rhythm, owning budgets, vendors and risk, and explaining all of it to a managing director and a board. This course covers that job for people who are heading there or have just arrived, with frameworks you can use and the judgement behind them.
You take the CTO seat at Mangrove Market as it plans two new cities, about 80 new stores, and a partner business twice today's size. The department has about 90 engineers in 12 teams, store IT, data and a small security team, and a technology budget of about $16 million a year. Across seven lessons you plan your first 100 days, write a technology strategy with a diagnosis, guiding policy and coherent actions, design an organisation for about 120 engineers with a leadership team and planning cadence, build the budget, workforce plan and vendor portfolio, set risk appetite and security governance, decide where AI should move a business number and write the policy for it, and present to the board.
Every lesson has a podcast episode, filled-in templates, quick checks, practice tasks with model answers and flashcards, and the organisation and money lessons have auto-checked JavaScript exercises (managers and layers for a growing department, and the cost of a hiring plan). The course ends with a capstone technology strategy for the board and a final exam for a free certificate.
What you will be able to do
- Plan your first 100 days as a department head: assess people, systems, delivery, risk and money, and lead your leadership team as a team
- Write a technology strategy that follows from business goals, with principles, a technology radar and what you will stop
- Design an organisation, leadership team and operating cadence for about 120 engineers, and hire executives well
- Own the budget, workforce plan and vendor portfolio, and make build, buy or outsource decisions with finance
- Govern risk, security and compliance with a stated risk appetite, clear owners and accountable incident handling
- Lead AI adoption with a policy and value measures, and report to a board with papers and metrics that support decisions
Syllabus
7 stops, about 4.5 h in total. Each stop fills in when you complete the lesson.
The department head's job
As a department head or CTO you lead leaders, and your work reaches the teams through people, systems and regular meetings that you design. This lesson shows what changes from manager to department head, which kind of CTO your company needs, how to assess a department in five lenses, and how to use your first 100 days at Mangrove Market.
Technology strategyOrganisation designBoard communication
Technology strategy
A technology strategy is a short set of choices that tells about 90 engineers what matters most, what to build on and what to stop. This lesson shows you how to get from Mangrove's business goals to a diagnosis, a guiding policy and five themes, and how to turn them into principles, a technology radar and a stop list that fit on two pages.
Technology strategyArchitecture principlesBoard communication
Organisation and operating model
An organisation chart says who reports to whom. An operating model also says who owns what, how leaders work together, and when each kind of decision gets made. This lesson shows you how to design both for about 120 engineers at Mangrove Market, how to hire the executives who run it, and how to change the structure without breaking trust.
Organisation designExecutive hiringTechnology strategy
Money: budgets, headcount and vendors
Mangrove spends about $16 million a year on technology, and as CTO you own all of it. This lesson shows you how to read and run that budget, plan hiring so the money buys the capacity you expect, manage cloud cost by unit, keep a healthy vendor portfolio, and bring real trade-offs to the finance director.
Budget ownershipVendor strategyOrganisation design
Risk, security and compliance
The board does not expect you to remove every risk. It expects you to know the big ones, to keep them inside limits it has agreed, and to lead well on the day one goes wrong. This lesson gives you the tools for that at Mangrove Market: risk appetite, a risk register, the Three Lines Model, security governance with NIST CSF 2.0, card payment and data protection rules, and incident accountability.
Risk governanceExecutive hiringBoard communication
Leading AI adoption
Everyone at Mangrove, from the board to the store managers, wants to know what the company is doing with AI. This lesson shows you how to lead it as CTO: find where AI moves a business number, run a small portfolio of bets with owners, write a use policy people can follow, govern the risks, and measure value honestly.
AI strategyRisk governanceBoard communication
The board and the executive team
As CTO you answer to a board and you work inside an executive team. Both judge technology by what it does for the business, and both see you for a few hours a quarter. This lesson shows you how to write board papers that get decisions, choose a handful of technology metrics a board can act on, treat the executive team as your first team, and answer hard questions and crises in a way that builds trust.
Board communicationTechnology strategyRisk governance
Capstone: Mangrove's three-year technology strategy
A realistic project with a rubric and a model answer.
Final exam and certificate
10 questions drawn at random, 70% to pass.
Capstone project
Mangrove's three-year technology strategy
As Mangrove Market's new CTO, prepare the technology strategy for the board. The company plans two new cities within two years (from about 320 to about 400 stores) and wants to double the partner business from about 1,800 to about 3,600 shops. Today the department has about 90 engineers in 12 teams, about 35 store IT staff, a data team of 8 and a security team of 3, a technology budget of about $16 million a year, part of the Partner app built by the agency Lagoon Digital, and card payments that fall under PCI DSS. Write the strategy paper, the organisation design with a hiring plan for about 120 engineers, a three-year budget with its trade-offs, a risk register with appetite and owners, and a ten-slide board presentation. If you lead a real department, you may use it instead, with confidential details changed.
You will hand in
- A technology strategy paper of 4 to 6 pages: diagnosis, guiding policy, strategic themes, principles, a technology radar and what you will stop
- An organisation design: teams and their boundaries, the leadership team, spans of control, the operating cadence and a hiring plan by quarter
- A three-year budget: run and change spending, people, cloud, vendors and hardware, with the main trade-offs and the vendor decisions such as Lagoon Digital
- A risk register with a risk appetite statement, owners and treatments, plus the security and AI governance you will put in place
- A ten-slide board presentation with the decision you ask for and a small set of technology metrics
Check what you know
Already know some of this? Answer 7 quick questions, one from each lesson, and we will mark the lessons you can skim. It takes about 4 minutes and nothing is graded.
Questions
Is this only for CTOs?
No. It is for anyone who leads a technology department or is heading there: heads of engineering, IT, data, QA or security, directors, and founders acting as CTO.
What should I take first?
Engineering Management, because the course builds on 1:1s, hiring, performance and team design. Finance for Tech Teams helps with the money lesson, and Strategy, Priorities & Roadmaps from the product line helps with strategy.
Does the course cover specific laws and standards?
It explains how to use frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, PCI DSS for card payments and the NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and how data protection and AI laws come in. Which laws apply depends on where your company operates, so always check with your legal and compliance teams.
Our company is much smaller than Mangrove. Is it still useful?
Yes. The examples use a department of about 90 engineers growing to 120, but the methods for strategy, budgets, risk and board communication work at 15 engineers too. Each lesson notes what changes in a small company.
How do I get the certificate?
Finish every lesson and pass the final exam: questions plus two short tasks, with 70% needed on each part. The capstone is reviewed separately and you can submit it whenever it is ready.
Is it really free?
Yes. Every lesson, podcast episode, exercise, quiz, final exam and certificate is free. The labs and their templates for real work are free too. Plus and Premium add every lab challenge, weekly extras and a mentor on top, and they never lock the tools or the courses.
How long does it take?
Each lesson shows an honest time for reading and doing. Most people finish a course in two to four weeks at three or four hours a week.