In a market that sees constant technological evolution, the relationship between a company’s Chief Product Officer and Chief Technology Officer is critical to success. These roles are deeply intertwined, and a strong, dynamic synergy is essential to effectively execute a business’s technology strategy and roadmap.
When the CPO and CTO are committed to working together to execute the company’s vision, great things can happen. Below, 20 of its members Forbes Technology Council discuss the key ingredients of a strong partnership between an organization’s CPO and CTO, and the steps they can take together to promote these key attributes.
1. Understanding the needs of the moment
A strong partnership makes each of them better. Great CPOs often have an engineering or developer background. Given how business needs, compliance, and customers can collide, it’s great to have an advocate for each at the top—a single leader responsible for each factor provides clarity around ownership and importance. The trick is for the CPO and CTO to work together around the needs of the moment and understand that the health of the business comes before anything else. – Agur Jogi, Pipedrive
2. Resilience in the Face of Failure
Resilience in the face of failure is a critical aspect of the relationship between a CPO and CTO. Building this trait involves analyzing failures together, learning from them, and adjusting strategies without assigning blame. This shared approach to problem solving strengthens their collaboration, ensuring that both leaders are aligned in the pursuit of innovation and excellence, even in the face of challenges or disagreements. – Milan Dordevic, Proctorio Incorporated
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Am I eligible?
3. Commitment to Cooperation
A critical feature is seamless collaboration. Regular communication, clear goals, an understanding of each other’s expertise and mutual respect form a strong foundation. Regular check-ins, collaborative planning, and shared vision foster synergy and drive innovation. – Nelly Voukaki, Looper Insights
4. Trust
The most critical feature of any healthy relationship is trust. Research shows that vulnerability is a necessary condition for this to flourish. It encourages empathy, mutual respect and dialogue. I always give away Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people as suggested reading on this critical topic. – Brendan Hooft, ESP
5. Effective Communication
A critical feature for a strong partnership between a CPO and CTO is effective communication. To develop this trait, it’s essential to hold regular collaboration sessions, ensure clear alignment of goals, and foster an open, transparent culture. A shared understanding of the product vision and technical issues fosters synergy, promotes innovation and successful product development. – Muneeb Tabani, SIHA Health and Wellness (Pvt) Ltd.
6. We spend time together
The CPO and CTO need to spend time together to understand each other’s perspectives, priorities, and challenges. Both have critical roles to play in creating a successful product. without any of these, the product will not perform. And if they understand each other, the product cycle time will be reduced and the product will have features that are more aligned with the needs of customers and potential customers. – Jyotishko Biswas, horsepower
7. Shared understanding of their customers
The CPO and CTO must have a shared understanding of the customers they both serve. It’s important for them to have robust conversations about whether a solution is valuable to customers, usable by customers, viable for the business, and feasible to build. – Amy Bunzel, autodesk.com
8. A shared vision
The Chief Product Officer and Chief Tech Officer should share a common vision and understand what each brings to the equation. The CPO role is about the ‘art of the possible’ – in other words, the ‘what’ – while the CTO role is about the ‘art of the real’ – in other words, the ‘how’. Their shared vision must align with overall business goals. – Naresh Mehta, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.
9. Appreciation of other’s capabilities
The CTO must trust that the CPO has good intuition backed by customer research. The CPO must trust that the CTO is prioritizing customer needs alongside the technical architecture. – Mang-Git Ng, Anvil
10. Active Listening
Effective communication is key to a CPO-CTO partnership. Regular, structured meetings and active listening encourage mutual understanding and alignment with goals. Developing this through collaboration and strategic planning ensures synchronized product and technology strategies. – KJ Dhaliwal, Social Discovery Group
11. Cross-functional Cooperation
The CTO and CPO must ensure effective communication through regular reviews and inclusive meetings. These are essential to creating a shared vision and goals and aligning the product vision with the technical execution. Cross-functional collaboration, transparent decision-making, and feedback loops between product and technical teams further enhance communication. – Deepak Gupta, LoginRadius
12. Alignment to top-level strategy and priorities
The best CPOs and CTOs take the time to align with a top-level strategy and support priorities to ensure their combined teams execute on what matters most. This degree of collaboration ensures that product and engineering teams can make the tough decisions and shift resources between product and technical priorities—all in the name of the larger business strategy. – Andy Boyd, Appfire
13. A Unified Voice
A critical characteristic of a strong partnership between the CPO and the CTO is a unified voice and alignment. Together, they should be well-equipped to talk about the functional and non-functional requirements of products, as an enjoyable user experience is a combination of both. This unified voice is developed with the common goal of creating a great product, along with a sense of accountability and a strong personal relationship. – Bobby Alexandrova, Loopio
14. Balancing a long-term vision with short-term execution
The ability to balance a strategic long-term vision with agile short-term execution is a critical part of the relationship between a CPO and a CTO. This starts with aligning with long-term goals and key metrics, being open to feedback, pivoting when needed, and establishing ownership and accountability. There will, of course, be moments of disagreement – the goal then is to discuss and redefine based on what is in the best interest of the team and the clients. – Chet Kapoor, DataStax
15. Strategic Empathy
A critical attribute for a strong CPO-CTO partnership is strategic empathy—understanding the pressures and goals of the other sector. Cultivating this requires a commitment to joint learning sessions, transparent dialogues about challenges, and joint participation in each area’s planning and review sessions. This commitment aligns product vision and technology execution. – Mike Capone, Qlik
16. Mutual Support
Many characteristics will benefit the relationship between the CPO and the CTO, but perhaps the most critical is mutual support. This means that the CPO appreciates and helps with more programming-focused activities, such as bug resolution, technical architecture, and adapting the ways developers prefer to work. Likewise, the CTO supports the CPO by honoring research, innovation, and timelines that will meet revenue goals. – Davis Bell, Blurred
17. Single Leadership
Both roles align the technology portfolio with the emotional behaviors that drive its purpose and use. Both work with the product marketing team to understand motivation, market research and buying cycles. Consider bringing both product management and CTO under the head of revenue so that sales, marketing and innovation are unified under a single growth-driven leader who takes a holistic view of the customer. – Terry Mirza, Compugen Systems, Inc.
18. An ownership mentality
Both leaders must have a complete ownership mindset about the product and the outcome. For example, the CPO must understand the technology well enough to train product managers to take ownership of an API-based strategy. Similarly, the CTO should have opinions about the user experience of the product to resolve issues. As both people own the outcome, they can develop the trust that is critical to a strong partnership. – Liz Lee, Velocity Global
19. Transparent Sharing
A critical characteristic of a strong CPO-CTO partnership is mutual trust, built on open communication. This foundation enables effective collaboration on product strategy and technology implementation. To develop this trait, regularly scheduled strategy sessions and transparent sharing of feedback, challenges and successes are key, fostering a shared vision and respect for each other’s expertise. – Akash Ramakrishnan, AdSkate Inc.
20. Coherence and shared business values
These two roles are completely intertwined in a customer-focused business. The CPO and CTO should focus on sharing similar business values and supporting each other, whether it’s internal systems, external product feature sets, or tools for staff. Coherence between business and product offerings differentiates a customer-focused company from one that is not. – Tom Roberto, SG Network Services
