The CPTO Advantage: How Unified Leadership Accelerates Engineering Teams with Alex Kroman

In this episode of CTO Insights, I had the pleasure of hosting Alex Kroman, Chief Product and Technology Officer at AssemblyAI, to explore the evolving role of the combined Chief Product and Technology Officer position and its impact on creating high-performing engineering teams.

"I very much think about running a product organization as shipping two products - one product is what the customers use and another product is what the developers inside the company use to build that product."

Here are the main takeaways from this episode:

* Combining the CPO and CTO roles helps eliminate silos, align priorities under one unified vision, and create clearer accountability.

* Instead of separating feature work from infrastructure or developer experience initiatives, Alex emphasizes having one comprehensive roadmap.

* Every planning cycle begins by identifying a clear North Star metric and then mapping both product and tech efforts to move that needle.

* Velocity isn’t about pushing teams harder; it’s about removing friction.

* Metrics like deploy frequency, mean time to recovery, and off-hours paging are useful but only when viewed in balance.

* Titles matter less than mindset. Product managers with technical curiosity and engineering managers who understand user needs tend to create more collaborative, high-functioning teams.

* Even if roles remain distinct, Alex actively seeks PMs who understand tech and engineering managers who care about product outcomes.

Listen now on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube.

This episode is brought to you by Adeva, a global network of top developers connecting businesses with world-class talent. Whether you need to scale your team or bring an idea to life, Adeva empowers you to increase your engineering capacity without the overhead of traditional hiring.

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