What do you know about engineering?

What should every CEO know about engineering and managing an engineering organization?

• After seeing the great presentations "10 Things CEOs Need to Know About Design" by Jason Purtorti and "10 Things CEOs Need to Know About the Internet" by Eric Ries, I realized that there are a lot of things that every CEO needs to know about engineering and managing an engineering organization. Link to Jason's presention: http://www.slideshare.net/novaurora/10-things-ceos-need-to-know-about-design Link to Eric Ries' presentation: http://www.slideshare.net/ericreiss/10-things-every-ceo-needs-to-know-about-the-internet This is a follow-up question to .

• Answer:

  I'd propose two things.  1) talent.  2) uncertainty. 1) if you have the most talented team, you will build great products and will win your market.  This helps get the CEO's focus onto creating an environment that will attract great people.  Transparent communications.  Great work environment.  Respect for the engineering discipline.  And great people are so much more productive than average folks (the 10x principle) that this also take the focus off of how "hard" people are working and onto do we have the *best* people. 2) You are building something no one has ever built before, so you don't know how hard it will be to build.  All you can do is target a minimum viable product, make your best guess on schedule, revise it along the way, then work hard to get there.  CEOs who demand "commitment" and "accountability" on schedules tend to get disappointed and estranged from the engineering team since they are always pushing for "more, faster" without any data suggesting if that is possible.  And if they have the right folks (back to principle 1) then the commitment and talent of the team would not be in doubt, so the CEO can address the team from a position of trust.