Why Choose CTO Consulting as a Service?

Many modern businesses require expertise in software development services and IT consulting. One of such services is CTO advisory.

To cut a long story short, a chief technology officer consultant is a modern must-have option for all sorts of businesses. However, who are these “chief technology officers”, what services do they provide, and how to hire a CTO for your business?

What is CTO as a Service?

Chief Technology Officer as a service is a type of IT consulting. To simplify it, CTO as a service is a technology business consultant, who offers his experience and expertise in various processes, related to software development consulting.

Unlike team extension services, you hire not simply a niche-experienced software developer, or someone, familiar with technologies. Instead, CTO consulting includes many other extra services and requires an understanding of how different business processes work.

To cut a long story short, a CTO consultant must be familiar with both the technical and business sides of the project, they are involved in. Most CTO consultants are high-rank specialists, with a lot of experience working with each aspect.

There are numerous types of chief technology officer consultant services:

• In-house CTO consulting
• Offshore, or virtual CTO
• CTO on demand
• Part-time, or fractional CTO services

Moreover, they can commonly combine, resulting in a more specific and unique approach to IT consulting for your business.

Still, it does not answer the main questions: what are CTO as a service responsibilities, and when do you need CTO consulting?

What Does a CTO Consultant Do?

In a nutshell, CTO consulting offers strategic planning for software development, choosing a tech stack for your project, product definition, business process automation, and many more.

Mostly, CTO consulting is like a Swiss Army knife. This service covers multiple aspects of the software development project to ensure its success. So, instead of naming all potential CTO as a service responsibilities, let’s consider the core aspects, they can improve and offer.

Discovery Phase

Strategic planning for software development is one of the core CTO responsibilities.

The best way to create and implement strategic plans is to start from the very beginning. Therefore, CTO consulting is commonly involved in the discovery phase of the project.

To make it simple, your business should have an idea for future projects before you and your management team study the market. As a result, while you do your research, the CTO as a service will start planning and shaping the technological side of the project.

At this point, the main technologies and platforms must be chosen. Additionally, IT infrastructure and software architecture should be designed as well. Still, these are just drafts: after the market research, you might reshape some aspects of the product to be more competitive.

Usually, CTO consultants are involved in other aspects of the project discovery phase. This helps to understand the context, make better decisions, and cut expenses by creating a more accurate and predictable budget.

Project Planning

Alternatively, you can choose a CTO on demand in terms of project planning.

Sometimes, a project might not require hiring a full-time chief technical officer. Instead, you can find a short-term CTO consultant for a particular task.

For instance, you can have a trustworthy project manager on board, who needs assistance with software development planning. So, the chief technology officer can be your personal business technology advisor. You can involve such a specialist at the project planning stage and ask for CTO advice during the development if needed.

Don’t forget, that CTO consulting is tech-first: technology strategy is their priority, not the task management. Still, they can be involved in both.

Besides, don’t forget about CTO consulting rates, and the need to pay for each task they perform, or hour they work.

Tech Strategy Development

Each CTO is first of all a technology business consultant.

So, the most efficient way to use CTO consulting services - is to create a technology strategy for software development, and ask for technology leadership.

To cut a long story short, CTO consultants can define the most suited and efficient technology solutions for your software development project, and guide and advise your development team on using certain tech stacks.

Among the main benefits of hiring a CTO for strategic planning for software development are:

• Choosing technologies, most suited for your project
• Increasing the efficiency of software
• Selecting the best ways to embody your ideas
• Creating a more accurate development schedule
• Making a predictable budget for software project

Project Audit

As was mentioned before, hiring a full-time chief technical officer is a required step for each project.

For example, if you have already started software development, and there is no need for strategic planning or technology strategy for software development, you still should consider CTO consulting services.

Still, you can find an advisor, instead of a full-fledged team member. One of the most common reasons for choosing CTO as a service for startups is project audition. In such cases, you pay the CTO hourly rate and ask them to analyze technical aspects of the project, inspect various related processes, and define:

• Potential threats
• Possible bottlenecks or other issues
• What can be improved
• What can be ignored

CTO on demand is the preferred choice for such tasks because the project audit is relatively fast. Thus, you can save some time and resources, by having professional feedback and improvement solutions.

Project Scaling

Finally, CTO as a service is an ideal choice for any business that uses scaling software.

Project scaling is one of the most difficult processes. It is hard to predict how the application will behave after scaling, and how many resources it can take: either a few common development practices and coding or will require developing specific custom development tools and reshaping the whole infrastructure.

This is why CTO as a service is a decision, worth making. Chief technology officer consultant has much more experience in accomplishing such tasks and making. This expertise allows them to make the right decisions and predict all the possible outcomes.

Even if the project scaling seems not as difficult it is better to be safe than sorry. Don’t forget, that the CTO consultant is more aware of possible ways to deal with such tasks and offers you an out-of-box solution, which might be even cheaper, faster, and easier than the one, you are considering.

When Do You Need a CTO Consultant?

Knowing CTO as a service responsibility is just halfway. You also should know when and how to hire a CTO consultant.

Despite the technical expertise, CTO advice is not an all-in-one solution, suited for any task or project. So, it is important to understand the context of possible cases and learn which exact CTO as a service to choose.

Lack of In-House Tech Expertise

The first, and most obvious scenario, when you require CTO consulting is when you lack internal expertise. It is one of the most popular scenarios for finding a CTO as a service for business.

On the one hand, in such circumstances, you have to consider hiring a full-time chief technical officer in-house. Still, finding an experienced specialist takes work, especially when you have limited resources.

Alternatively, you can choose offshore CTO consulting from popular outsourcing destinations like Ukraine. So, you will find an experienced consultant to perform tasks right now and start looking for an in-house replacement, taking your time.

Anyway, among the most suited CTO as a service solution for such cases are all of them:

• In-house CTO consulting
• Offshore, or virtual CTO
• CTO on demand
• Part-time, or fractional CTO services

Still, the most preferred option is finding an in-house or offshore CTO consultant because the need for more expertise is a rather long-term issue that requires an appropriate approach.

Need Help Developing a Tech Strategy

Technology strategy for software development is another task, which requires experienced specialists.

Still, it is hard to predict which type of CTO consulting is preferred in such conditions. On the one hand, it is better to have a dedicated consultant, who will monitor and oversee the process, or offer further IT strategy consulting and implementation.

However, it is possible to assume, that for such a task you can choose a virtual CTO on demand or fractional CTO consulting. Yet, to achieve better efficiency, you should discuss the possibility of involving these advisors if needed after the technology strategy is designed.

Face Complex Technical Challenges

Technology leadership is crucial. The best way to achieve this is to find a reliable business technology advisor.

The IT industry includes a wide range of software development solutions. Thus, even experienced developers can face challenges and issues, when dealing with new software tools. The more complex the software is, the more chances there are for challenges to occur.

So, to avoid unneeded struggle or to figure out which tools will be more suited for your software, you can choose CTO as a service. Dedicated consultants can define the main challenges and offer your team ways to deal with them. Additionally, they are much more experienced in facilitating and orchestrating complex and scalable projects.

Once again, the most fitting choice for such cases is to find a CTO on demand, or fractional chief technical officer.

Need Help with Business Process Automation

Eventually, apart from helping with product definition, software development planning, and technology strategy designing, CTO consulting services offer assistance with business process automation.

Just like with software development project scaling, business process automation is a challenging assignment. Automating repetitive tasks can bring numerous benefits to your business. Still, if done wrong - it can cause pipeline bottlenecks and slow down the performance.

One of the possible ways to avoid it - is to find a fractional or on-demand CTO as a service, so that they can create a detailed plan and warn your team about possible issues that can occur. Additionally, after implementing all the changes, you can ask for a CTO service to check, if everything works as supposed to.

How to Choose the Right CTO Consulting Service Provider

The main requirement for a CTO for hire is its experience. The more experienced a technology business consultant is - the better services it provides.

Most CTO services are offered by IT outsourcing companies, just like Incora. So, if you want to find a trustworthy CTO consulting service provider - is to check case studies of IT vendor. Alternatively, you can also contact them directly, asking for CTO service, and set up a meeting to discuss your ideas.