This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

369 tools for technology leaders in one course: 225 ready-to-use question lists, checklists, procedures, templates and scoring matrices, 121 models and methods, and 23 services and apps shown on screen.

Open a lecture, take the tool, use it with your engineering team.

Why strong engineers struggle as CTOs

The best engineer becomes the CTO and keeps solving technical problems. But the job has changed. Now the questions are different: which technology bets support the business plan, what to tell the board about risk, how to hire twenty people in a year and keep the ones who matter, how to say no to the product team without losing them. Technical depth got you here. It does not answer these questions.

What changes after this course

You have a technology strategy linked to business goals and a roadmap you can defend. You choose architecture and stack by criteria, not by habit. You prioritize with a formula everyone sees. You know your risks and what scaling will cost. And you manage people as a leader: hiring, onboarding, pay, motivation, goals, one-on-one meetings, feedback, conflict and change.

What is inside: 369 tools, counted lecture by lecture

You do not have to take this number on trust. Open any lecture and read its description: every tool inside is listed there by name.

• 225 ready-to-use tools inside the presentations:
• 62 question lists and scripts: emerging technology evaluation, digital transformation diagnosis, daily stand-up discussions, first coaching session script
• 44 checklists: CTO first 100 days, technology vision, cloud strategy selection, technology M&A due diligence
• 42 step-by-step procedures and workflows: technology strategy development, technology roadmap development, engineering interviews, technical debt management
• 38 templates and sample documents: technology strategy outline, OKR planning, user story, one-on-one meeting agenda
• 26 scorecards, rubrics and matrices: RICE prioritization, technology selection matrix, software architecture selection, CTO risk assessment
• 6 formulas and metric sets: project performance metrics, technology scaling KPIs, employee retention metrics
• 7 other working tools: team effectiveness feedback exercise, negotiation style self-assessment, remote work competency interview scorecard
• 121 models and methods explained with examples: Agile delivery, DevOps practices, Team Topologies, FinOps practices
• 23 services and apps shown on screen, from a quick look to a detailed demo: Jira, Trello, Asana, Slack, Miro, Notion, Zapier and others

Where the tools are

• The CTO role and technology strategy (5 sections, 48 tools). Role and mission, strategy and architecture, engineering teams and delivery, product, project and risk management, scaling and budget.
• People management skills for CTOs (316 tools, 48 lectures). Most of the tools are here: hiring, onboarding, team development, leadership styles, pay and bonuses, motivation, retention, talent, goals, performance, one-on-one meetings, coaching, meetings, change, business models, conflict, negotiation and remote teams.
• Innovation and digital transformation (9 tools).

This is a course about leading technology, not about writing code. The technology part gives the frame for decisions. The larger part gives the management tools an engineer usually never received.

Who is teaching

I am Mike, the #1 HR instructor on Udemy, with 1,800,000+ course enrollments from 170,000 students, and the author of about 200 books on Amazon. I built the people system at Preply as it became a unicorn and worked at Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank across 20 years in HR. I hold PHRi, SHRM-CP and HCI sHRBP certifications and represent HRCI in Eastern Europe.

I am not an engineer, and I do not teach technology here. I hired CTOs for different companies, so I know well who a CTO is and what makes one succeed. Once we were looking for a CTO for a startup and found a candidate everyone liked: the leaders, the co-founders and me. With us he was modest and careful. We left him alone with the team, and the team said: never. With them he had talked about what a tough boss he was. We did not hire him and were glad later. What a CTO needs most is rarely in the code: it is leadership, business and strategy.

How to use the course

Watch the first five sections in order: they give the CTO frame. Use the people management section as a reference: section and lecture titles show how many tools are inside, and each lecture description lists them by name.

What is included

• 55 lectures across 7 sections, 29 hours
• 54 downloadable resources: the lecture presentations
• 369 tools across the lessons, ready to copy into your own work
• A 10-question practice test, a quiz and a role play
• Lifetime access to all materials
• Active instructor support in the Q&A section
• A Udemy Certificate of Completion

Where to start

Open the first lecture and go through the CTO first 100 days checklist: mark what you have already done and what is still open. Enrol now and start your first lesson today.