Notes ·
The First Doc A New CTO Should Write
Most first-time CTOs spend their first ninety days reviewing what already exists. The opposite habit is more useful: write a single page describing what you intend to do.
Min-Jun Park · Strategy / Operating cadence / Writing rituals
A new CTO inherits two things on day one: a backlog and a set of unwritten expectations. The backlog is the easier of the two because it has form. The unwritten expectations are where most strategic anxiety lives, and they are the reason a single short document is the right first artifact.
The doc has three parts: the working contract with the rest of leadership, the engineering operating brief for the next two quarters, and a list of decisions you have already taken without realising. The third part is the most uncomfortable to write because it forces you to admit how much of your authority is being expressed through default rather than declaration.
I have watched four cohorts take a half-finished version of this doc to their boards and use it as the spine of every quarterly review afterwards. Two of them rewrote the doc inside six months; both said the rewrite was easier than the first draft because they had something concrete to argue with. That is the only thing the doc needs to do.