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Capstone project for Leading a Tech Department: Head of Engineering to CTO

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.

What you hand in

  1. A technology strategy paper of 4 to 6 pages: diagnosis, guiding policy, strategic themes, principles, a technology radar and what you will stop
  2. An organisation design: teams and their boundaries, the leadership team, spans of control, the operating cadence and a hiring plan by quarter
  3. 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
  4. A risk register with a risk appetite statement, owners and treatments, plus the security and AI governance you will put in place
  5. A ten-slide board presentation with the decision you ask for and a small set of technology metrics

Check your work

Tick each item when your project meets it. Be strict: this is the rubric the reviewer uses.

  • Strategy choices follow from the business goals: the diagnosis names the few problems that block two new cities and a doubled partner business, and each theme traces back to them
  • The strategy says what the department will stop or not do, and the principles and radar are specific enough to settle real decisions
  • The organisation design matches the strategy, with team boundaries, reasonable spans of control and a leadership team whose roles do not overlap
  • The budget is realistic and shows its trade-offs: run versus change, hiring timing and ramp-up, cloud unit costs and at least one build, buy or outsource decision with an exit plan
  • Risks are stated with an appetite, a named owner and a treatment, and security governance covers payments and data protection
  • AI appears where it moves a business number, with a policy, owners and a way to measure value
  • The board deck leads with the decision asked, uses a few metrics that matter to the board, and could be understood without the presenter

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Model answer

The model answer opens once your capstone passes the review, so you can compare your work with an outline of a strong submission.

Hand in your capstone

Your links are checked automatically, then the work is scored against the rubric above, item by item, with comments. A pass counts toward the course certificate and shows on your profile.

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