CTO Alignment on Product Direction
Shifted a locked engineering roadmap by building bottom-up support among engineers before bringing the case to the CTO.
Karan Mungra
SDE at Krutrim
From their time as
SDE
Krutrim • 2024 - Present
Overview
The engineering team at Krutrim was midway through a roadmap that, based on the customer and product research, was pointed in the wrong direction. The CTO was committed to the existing plan, and the engineering team was already executing against it. Bringing a contrary view directly to the CTO risked being dismissed, especially coming from someone junior to the senior leadership.
The Story
The engineering team at Krutrim was midway through a roadmap that, based on the customer and product research, was pointed in the wrong direction. The CTO was committed to the existing plan, and the engineering team was already executing against it. Bringing a contrary view directly to the CTO risked being dismissed, especially coming from someone junior to the senior leadership.
The approach was to start with the engineers. Over several weeks, conversations were held across the engineering team to understand their read on the roadmap and to share the emerging picture from the customer research. As those conversations happened, engineers began raising similar questions upward through their own channels.
By the time the case was brought to the CTO directly, there was already a signal coming from the engineering team itself. The CTO engaged seriously, validated the data independently, and shifted position. The roadmap was revised.