CTO Readiness
CTO Readiness Checklist
Use this to sanity check your product before you hire a full-time CTO or commit to a build sprint.
1. Customer and revenue clarity
- We can describe the target customer in one sentence.
- We have at least 5 real customer interviews or sales calls.
- We can name the one metric that matters most in the next 90 days.
2. Product scope
- We can define a single core system that creates or protects revenue.
- We can name the 3 features that prove the system works.
- We can describe what we will NOT build in the first release.
3. Data and integrations
- We know what data we must capture, store, and report on.
- We have a list of required integrations and their owners.
- We can name the top 3 security or compliance risks.
4. Delivery constraints
- We know the launch date or the next decision deadline.
- We have a budget range we can commit to for 90 days.
- We have one owner who can make product decisions fast.
5. Ongoing operations
- We know who will run the system after launch.
- We have a plan for support, maintenance, and uptime monitoring.
- We can define a 30-day post-launch success checklist.