Marc van Neerven

Independent Software Business Consultant

Neerventure.com

Helping startups & scale-ups with their technical strategy, in terms of (Native) Cloud Solutions Architecture, Digital Transformation, Agile, Team Growth, Governance, Change Management, etc.

Founder & CTO

Mentoring (aspiring) CTOs on leadership, cultural, strategic, psychological, and systemic aspects of the CTO role.

CTO Mentor

World of WOW

Chief Technology Officer (Fractional)

Advising WOW on B2C SaaS development & scaling.

Strategic Board Advisor

Qogni Technologies

Development (PWA, AI, Cloud) and SaaS Strategy

CTO and Partner

Helping Qogni with the next steps of their Health Platform and Movement

Knights Absorb - Learning

Helping with software strategy and product development

Interim CTO (Fractional)

Pure Web Foundation

Doing extraordinary stuff while keeping close to official web standards....

Founder, Lead Architect & CTO

ISV Canvas

Presenting an assessment tool for Software Tech (ISVs, Startups, Scaleups) to validate their technical maturity in 7 key areas and providing guidance for growth.

Microsoft

For Microsoft, I assess startups' technology status using a Tech Canvas I developed, loosely based on Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas.

Independent Startup/Scaleup advisor

Mentoring scale-up companies in the Microsoft for Startups' Amsterdam Scale Up program.

Scale Up Mentor

MT/Sprout

Writing blogs about the life of a CTO at Startups and Scaleups.

Startup Expert

Get-e

Providing strategic advice on Software Architecture, Cloud Fit, Processes and Team Structure.

Senior Advisor to the CTO

Adapta

Helping to realize Adapta's ambitious plans with their healthcare super app

Interim Chief Technology Officer

Fractional CTO 💡 Top Startups Voice⚡ Helping startups make better SaaS

I'm an experienced SaaS CTO, working on a 'Fractional' basis, meaning that companies can hire me part-time as their Interim CTO, or as an advisor to the board. 

I work for startups, scaleups, ISVs and other software companies, or consultancies turning into SaaS companies.

My work is transformational: when I leave, a company should be better off in terms of their (tech) strategy and/or operational excellence.

Before becoming a CTO, I have been a solutions and cloud architect. I still code, as an open source contributor, and sometimes for 'my' startups, doing Proof-of-Concepts.

I'm a Web Standards evangelist, and a Social Impact Lover. 

I've seen it all, with more than 30 years of experience in Software Development, and I'm now focusing on Native Cloud as a natural fit for startups and scaleups.

I write a lot about the life of a CTO, and about the Modern Web.

Writing blogs about the life of a CTO at Startups and Scaleups. 

Adam Horner

Synova Technology

Helping technology leaders grow beyond execution and lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.

Many CTOs and senior tech leaders find themselves in high-stakes roles with little structured support. 

You're expected to scale teams, align with execs, drive strategy - and still stay technical enough to be credible. It’s a lot.

The CTO Playbook was created for leaders like you.

It’s a coaching platform designed for the real-world challenges of technology leadership - with practical support to help you evolve into the trusted executive your company needs.

💡 Coaching Programs

Leadership isn’t instinct. It’s learnable. The Playbook includes three coaching programs:

⛺️ CTO Basecamp
Cohort-based coaching to strengthen your foundation and lead with clarity and confidence

🏔️ CTO Elevate (Coming soon)
 For leaders building strategic influence and aligning technology with business goals

🧗🏽‍♂️ CTO Ascent
1:1 coaching for CTOs navigating scale, complexity, and high-stakes leadership

Each program is structured - but not prescriptive.
I’ll share my playbook - and help you build your own.

🧠 What We Work On

✔️ Escaping the execution trap and regaining time for strategy
✔️ Leading teams with calm confidence, even under pressure
✔️ Communicating with more influence across the business
✔️ Aligning technology efforts with business outcomes
✔️ Driving strategic impact beyond engineering
✔️ Becoming the leader your role demands

This work is for you if you're stepping into a CTO role, scaling fast, or ready to lead with influence - not just ship code.

📩 DM me if this sounds like where you're heading, or visit www.theCTOplaybook.com to learn more.

CTO Coach

Scaling a startup is challenging – balancing innovation with operational efficiency often leaves technology leaders stretched thin. Hiring a full-time CTO isn’t always feasible, but achieving the leadership and guidance you need is essential for growth.

That’s where I come in.

As your fractional CTO, I work alongside your team to:

👉 Refine your technology strategy to align with your business goals, ensuring clarity and direction.

👉 Assemble and lead high-performing teams, empowering them to tackle critical challenges with confidence.

👉 Streamline processes to remove roadblocks and drive productivity, from communication to the product development lifecycle.

⏩ The real breakthroughs happen when strategy, people, and processes come together to accelerate growth and innovation.

Here’s how I deliver impact:

🔹 Hands-on leadership
Whether it’s aligning roadmaps with business goals or mentoring teams, I provide practical solutions that create immediate results.

🔹 Tailored expertise
With over 30 years of industry experience, I bring scalable leadership that adapts to your needs – without the overhead of a full-time hire.

🔹 Strategic insights
I specialize in turning technical roadmaps into actionable strategies that strengthen investor confidence and accelerate timelines.

What my clients say:

Curious about what it’s like to work with me? My clients’ feedback speaks for itself – check out their recommendations on my profile for firsthand insights.

📩 Ready to drive innovation and scale with confidence? Contact me to learn more or book a FREE discovery session: www.synova.tech/services/fractional-cto

fractional CTO

The CTO Playbook Podcast is a weekly show for senior technology leaders who want to lead with more clarity, confidence, and strategic impact.

Each episode offers listeners a practical playbook - drawn from candid, real-world conversations with some of the most experienced minds in and around tech.

Guests include:
- CTOs and VPs of Engineering
- CEOs, founders, and startup operators
- Coaches, VCs, psychologists, and people leaders

Roughly 75% of episodes are interviews where we distil the guest’s story into actionable insights - a playbook others can apply. 

The remaining episodes are solo reflections where I tackle leadership challenges, role transitions, and the evolving nature of tech leadership.

With 50+ episodes published by mid-2025, The CTO Playbook has become more than just a podcast. It’s part of a broader platform supporting tech leaders through coaching, community, and learning.

🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Podcast Host

Kindred

At Kindred, we’re on a mission to make life easier for parents. Our mobile app is designed to help parents quickly and easily find and plan family-friendly activities — whether it’s a weekday, weekend, or holiday.

As a husband-and-wife team, we’re bootstrapping Kindred from the ground up. As CTO I bring 30 years of software development expertise. Combined with Jenine's background in product development and commercialisation, we make a well-rounded, complementary team.

We’re passionate about building Kindred so parents can spend less time planning and more time making memories with their kids.

Join us as we grow Kindred into a go-to app for families everywhere.

Interested in what we’re building? Follow us as we build in public.

Learn more about Kindred at www.mykindred.app. 

Join our Kindred waitlist for updates and early access — we’re excited to share this journey with you.

Co-founder and CTO

Tabeo

Having recruited a CTO into Tabeo and completed the succession plan, I continued my work as an advisor and coach for technology, product, and leadership.

Coach and Advisor

I advised Tabeo on a project to upgrade their core financial service platform and assisting in the recruitment of a permanent full-time CTO.

fractional Chief Technology Officer

Realforce

Continuing my CTO role on a fractional basis.

• As a key member of the Exec team reporting to the CEO, define and implement company strategy, improve leadership and management capabilities, and present at board meetings

• Led and architected a technology transformation from legacy “overgrown prototype” hardware and software stack to a modern AWS cloud-first microservices infrastructure that is scalable, secure, efficient, and much cheaper to monitor, maintain, and extend

• Successfully restructured engineering into multiple full-stack development teams to increase velocity

• Foster close collaboration between team leaders, DevOps, engineers, designers, operations, and product owners while simultaneously transitioning to a hybrid home-office working model

• Redesigned the technical recruiting process to attract and retain top engineering talent 

• Created, trained, and embedded standards and processes running a pragmatic agile development approach to ensure software quality, code maintainability, and platform reliability

• Expanded the Data and Analytics team to rebuild the data pipeline and customer facing analytics, improving both internal and customer facing reporting

• Accountable for DevOps and group wide Information and IT Security. Started from a typical startup security level to now working towards an audited industry accreditation

Chief Technology Officer

• In parallel with the CTO position, I was the acting CPO for 18 months (CPTO), leading engineering, devops, product, and design teams, in addition to a key operational team. Almost 50% of the company reported through to me

• Validated the technical and product acquisition theses for 2 separate acquisitions, Quedro, a real estate CRM and CDP acquired 2021, and Brandkeeper, a media asset management platform acquired 2022

• Oversaw the technical due diligence and product integrations of Quedro and Brandkeeper, with a focus on compatibility between technologies, teams, and methodologies. The combined group now offers a complete marketing platform for real estate.

• In conjunction with the CEO, prioritised and refined the product roadmap, validating both the direction and the details through customer feedback and request validation

• The headcount growth across the business needed a new leadership layer, which required new leadership skills. Best practices from my team leads were adopted across the business

• This position culminated by hiring Adfenix' first dedicated CPO, to whom I handed off Product and Design.

Interim Chief Product Officer

DB24

I advised DB24 on their software development, technology and engineering team strategy as they prepared to scale globally.

Ultimate Finance

• Replaced the CTO and took on the mandate to lead software development, technology infrastructure, legacy outsourced applications, internal user support, data warehousing, and innovation

• Restructured development team, expanded infrastructure support team, and reshaped two major technology outsourcing projects to balance the IT budget

• Instigated a major refresh of the data warehouse, data collation, and quality management to improve group wide business intelligence

• Promoted mentoring and staff development within the technology function at all levels

CIO - Innovation, Data, Development, Technology

• In a new role for the company, assessed the people, processes and technologies in the group looking for optimisation

• Modernised internal communication, leveraging tools like Microsoft Teams, Sharepoint, and Outlook to reduce reliance on email

Director of Innovation

Satago Ltd

• Satago is the free cashflow solution that gets businesses paid faster, identifies risk, and advances payment on invoices. Satago is now a principal component of TruFin Plc.

• Served as company director and CTO with responsibility for all engineering and technology. The core technology platform built during my leadership is fundamentally the same platform in use today and licensed by companies such as Lloyds Bank Plc

• Pitched the business to investors and got accepted to Seedcamp, the best-known early-stage startup accelerator in Europe, forming the kernel of the $1m USD seed round

• Recruited and developed the team starting from 2 founders to 15 employees, through several funding rounds, product pivots, and different revenue models

• Led the team to develop the product from functional prototype to sophisticated FinTech platform providing vital business finance to a growing active customer base. Built a unique risk scoring engine to offer an on-demand single invoice discounting service

• Principle architect and DevOps. Introduced pragmatic agile techniques, CI/CD and code quality culture, unit testing, git flow, code reviews and knowledge sharing as well as mentoring the developers

Co-Founder & Chief Technology Officer

Startupbootcamp FinTech

• Mentored startups in the London FinTech space as they competed to be accepted in to the 2014 StartupBootCamp FinTech accelerator program.

• Focused on technical aspects, mentored and acted as a sounding board for new founders

• Leveraged my own experience of belonging to and benefiting from Seedcamp (another accelerator programme) with Satago.

Mentor

Palantir Technologies

• First Palantir engineer hired in the UK, helped grow the UK & EU team to over 80 staff in 40 months

• Ran sales and sales support for major government customers through the entire sales cycle from first touch, technology demos, closing, and full implementation

• Built lean project teams with employees and contractors to create novel solutions to customer challenges on tight timescales

• Performed big data integration (ETL) from disparate data sets, near real-time synthesis, and custom technical development on multiple customer projects on-site to construct SME reports from information in the field

• Built, satisfied accreditation, deployed, and trained users on complete server/client networks running Palantir to comply with the demanding UK military information security and cryptography standards

• Organised analyst training and trade-craft education for users new to Palantir

• Mentored and developed UK and EU engineers and ran entire project reviews, covering all commercial and technical aspects

Forward Deployed Engineer

Detica

• Team leader responsible for all database development and DB testing on Detica’s largest project to date, a multi-year, multi-company project run by a consortium, building new national security capability for the UK Government. Detica played a key role providing information intelligence software

• Built and led a team of database developers, mostly recruited from outside the consultancy

• Responsible for hiring, training, DB development methodology, processes, team structure, quality control & standards, deployment and test management

• Detica was acquired by BAE Systems shortly after I left the business

Principal Consultant

Helping CTOs, startups & scaleups accelerate • CTO coach • fractional CTO • strategy workshops

⏩ There’s no instruction manual for becoming a CTO.
You’re expected to lead strategically, but the reality is messy.

You’re in the weeds. Balancing team demands, executive expectations, delivering technology and driving business outcomes - all at once.

I know the feeling because I’ve lived it.

I made the shift from technical lead to executive without a roadmap. That experience shaped how I lead today, and how I coach.

For years, I’ve supported CTOs and senior tech leaders through coaching, helping them move from reactive execution to confident, strategic leadership.

To bring it all together I created The CTO Playbook - a leadership platform built for the full CTO journey.

The podcast carried the name first. But coaching has always been the foundation, and the core of my work.

I think of leadership like climbing a mountain:

⛺ CTO Basecamp
Cohort-based coaching to strengthen the foundations of strategic leadership. For leaders who want to move from reacting to leading with clarity and confidence.

🏔️ CTO Elevate (Coming soon) 
For leaders ready to sharpen their influence, align more deeply with business strategy, and step into a broader executive presence.

🧗🏻 CTO Ascent
Personalised 1:1 coaching for CTOs navigating scale, complexity, and high-stakes leadership - tailored to your goals, context, and growth

Each program is structured, but not prescriptive.
I’ll share my playbook, and help you build your own.

👥 Who this Is for

You’re a CTO, VP of Eng, Head of Eng, or senior technology leader doing far more than shipping code.

Maybe you’re:
- New to the role and want to lead with intention
- Growing fast and need structure to support your scale
- A seasoned CTO ready to lead with clarity and executive presence
- Tired of solving it all alone, and ready for tailored support

🎤 Community & learning

- The CTO Playbook podcast - real conversations from the seat
- A peer network of leaders facing similar challenges
- Space to connect, reflect, and grow without the noise

👇 What we work on

✔️ Gaining back time for strategy and team development
✔️ Communicating with more influence across the business
✔️ Building leadership depth beyond execution
✔️ Showing up with clarity and confidence in complex situations
✔️ Driving strategic impact aligned with business outcomes

With 30+ years in technical leadership, including a decade as a CTO, I coach from experience, using grounded frameworks, not generic theory.

📩 DM me or visit www.theCTOplaybook.com to join a cohort for CTO Basecamp or explore coaching options.

CTO & Co-founder

• Provide fractional CTO consulting (aka CTO-as-a-service) for startups and scaleups. Benefit from all the years of experience at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CTO

• Growth strategy – provide additional technical leadership to help startups confidently build the technology, product and team

• CTO mentoring – support and mentor CTOs as they build their teams and processes

• Feature delivery – identify, prioritise and help fix bottlenecks to expedite feature delivery by engineering teams

• Reliability & scalability – identify processes to automate and where additional test coverage will help you win trust and increase customer satisfaction

• Data strategy – explore the value of existing data to reduce churn, increase revenues, or reduce costs

• Information security – help security leaders identify areas of weakness and prepare for independent audits or industry certifications (SOC, ISO, CEP, GDPR etc)

• For investors – a due diligence service that highlights risks and opportunities from the product processes to the technical capabilities, covering information security, technical debt, and potential to scale

We like to talk about digital transformation as if it’s a tech challenge.
But if you’ve been through it, you know better.

Technology is the easy part. The real challenge is the organisation.

In this episode of The CTO Playbook, I spoke with Michael Schank, a transformation advisor who has spent over 25 years helping firms like Citi, EY and Bank of America navigate change from the inside. That’s where complexity builds quietly, and misalignment spreads unnoticed.

Michael doesn’t start with sprints or tools. He starts with a question. Do we actually understand how the business works?

In his book, Digital Transformation Success, he introduces the Process Inventory — a method for mapping what’s really happening before change begins.

Here’s what stood out in our conversation:

✅  Misalignment isn’t a symptom. It’s the problem.
When no one agrees on what’s changing, progress is just motion.

✅  Automation without clarity leads to disappointment
If the business doesn’t know what it needs, no system will deliver what the team expects.

✅  Failure hides in the handoffs
We focus on the big picture and miss the gaps — in ownership, roles, and responsibilities.

If you’ve ever watched a well-funded transformation drift off course, this episode will feel familiar.

🎧 The CTO Playbook is available on all major platforms (link in comments).

What’s a hard truth you’ve learned about transformation?

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam Horner, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort will soon be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

CTO Coach | Helping CTOs lead with clarity, confidence, and strategic impact | Creator, The CTO Playbook

Adam Horner - The CTO Playbook - EP71 - Michael Schank - Thumbnail

Sometimes the biggest risk isn’t in the system. It’s in the silence that follows when the only person who understands it is gone.

One of Plumma’s clients lived through that. When their CTO passed away, years of undocumented knowledge disappeared overnight. The entire system existed inside one person’s head and a codebase no one else could read.

Without change, collapse was inevitable. Technical debt grew with every update, and innovation had already stopped.

In this episode of The CTO Playbook, I spoke with Marcello Modica and Matteo Di Battista about what happens when knowledge silos turn into business risk and how architecture choices can either trap or free an organisation.

Here are three takeaways from our conversation:

✅ When knowledge lives in one head, the business stops learning. Systems become unmaintainable the moment understanding becomes exclusive.
✅ APIs are more than interfaces. They’re how we protect teams from single points of failure.
✅ Open standards create freedom. They prevent vendor and developer lock-in, keeping innovation alive even when people move on.

👉🏻 How have you handled knowledge loss or silos in your organisation?

🎧 The CTO Playbook is available on all major podcast platforms (link in comments).

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam Horner, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort will soon be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

Everyone says they want visibility. Until it shows them something they’d rather not see.

I’ve seen leaders chase dashboards, metrics, and reports. But when the numbers exposed decision gaps, slow execution, or poor leadership? The enthusiasm vanished.

The dashboard wasn’t broken, but the accountability was.

One startup had a beautiful metrics board showing lots of graphs and numbers. But every time something stalled, the team refined the data instead of asking hard questions. Shipping slowed. Trust eroded.

The visibility was there, but ownership wasn’t.

Tools don’t fix blind spots, people do. Visibility on its own isn’t brave, acting on what you see is.

👉🏼How do you make visibility uncomfortable on purpose while still building trust?

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort will soon be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

Quote: Leaders say they want visibility. Until it surfaces the decision they avoided. Dashboards don't create accountability. People Do. Visibility is easy. Ownership is hard.
Adam Horner - CTO Coach

The latest tool isn’t the same as the right solution.

That’s something Matthew Carr reminded me of in the last week’s episode of The CTO Playbook.

Matthew has led technology teams through high-stakes transformations, and one of his biggest lessons is simple, focus on outcomes.

When the team got excited about a new tool, he’d ask one question: Does it help us get where we want to be?

If not, they parked it.
If yes, they moved.

It wasn’t about chasing the latest tech. It was about alignment, clarity and trust. Matthew saw his role shift from decision-maker to facilitator. The one who asked the right questions and kept everyone thinking in the same direction.

It sounds simple, but it’s rare. Too often we chase what’s new instead of what’s needed.

🎧 We talk about this shift in the latest episode of The CTO Playbook. It’s for every leader trying to keep teams focused on solving problems, not chasing trends.

👉🏼 How do you help your teams stay focused on outcomes when new technology is tempting?

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam Horner, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort is soon to be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

Can we finally build software the way we say we want to with AI? Collaborative, clear, and built from a shared understanding.

That’s what GitHub’s new open source Spec Kit hints at. Not just another AI wrapper, but a toolkit that uses specs as the source of truth for developing larger code components with AI, so it can scaffold the right code, tests, docs, and more.

At first glance, it looks like a clean consolidation of ideas that have been circulating for months. Ideas I’ve been exploring myself and hearing echoed in conversations with CTOs I coach, contacts I talk about the podcast, peers I respect, and product teams working through the real-world challenges.

🧠 Write the spec
🤖 Let AI generate
🧑‍💻 Improve and shape
🔁 Repeat

It’s not perfect, but it does feel like a practical step forward, one that might actually fit into how modern teams work, rather than asking them to rethink everything.

Curious to know, have you tried it yet? Could you see something like this becoming part of your dev workflow, or does it still feel too far away from where your teams are right now?

Link in the comments if you want to take a look.

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort is soon to be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

Change rarely arrives all at once.
Sometimes it accumulates quietly until we realise we’ve underestimated it.

This morning, West Sweden woke up under an unexpected layer of snow. It wasn’t dramatic, just enough to interrupt the rhythm of the day. I stepped outside, felt the cold bite, and did a quick internal audit: winter tyres, tick. Washer fluid, tick. Coat, of course. Winter boots… still packed away in a box in the basement.

A small omission, easily rationalised. The ground seemed manageable. The snow wasn’t heavy. I’d deal with it later.

Except it kept snowing. All day.

By the afternoon, as Jenine and I sat in a motionless line of traffic, the light snowfall had turned into something far more consequential. By evening, the pavements had transformed into a thin, treacherous sheen. And as I made my way down to the basement to finally fetch those boots, I discovered the cost of that tiny delay: one or two sharp slips on the way. Not enough to fall, but enough to remind me I’d cut the margin far too fine.

And that moment stuck with me.

Because this is how unpreparedness often works in organisations. Not through dramatic surprises, but through gradual shifts that quietly outpace our focus, our habits, or our capacity to adapt. A team coping “well enough” until the load increases. A minor architectural compromise that becomes a structural liability. A leadership gap tolerated because things are still moving ... until suddenly they’re not.

We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later. And later always feels like it will arrive before the consequences do.

But systems, both technical and human, have their own weather patterns. And by the time we feel the ground slip underfoot, we’ve already entered the zone where correction requires more effort, more urgency, and more luck than it should.

Today wasn’t just a reminder for me to finally put my boots on.
It was a reminder that readiness is never about the big events.
It’s about the small, obvious signals we ignore until they compound.

So here’s the question I have for you:

👉🏻 How long do you wait before addressing the early signs that conditions are already changing beneath your feet?

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort will soon be announced. Join the waitlist to be the first to hear about it.

Legacy systems don’t fail loudly. They fail quietly when one day, everything just stalls.

⚠️ The person who built it is gone.
⚠️ No one knows how it works.
⚠️ Your team stops shipping, and the business starts bleeding.

In this episode of The CTO Playbook, I spoke with Marcello Modica and Matteo Di Battista about how companies end up in that place, and more importantly, how to get out of it.

Marcello has spent over 20 years leading ERP transformations across Europe, helping manufacturers modernise complex systems as the founder of Log Consulting. Matteo helps SaaS and industrial companies scale across borders, connecting them with the right technologies, people, and strategic partners to unlock growth.

Together, we explored what happens when systems become too dependent on one person, and how an API-first, visual approach can help teams modernise without blowing everything up.

Here are three things we unpacked:

✅ If one person holds all the knowledge, we are one departure away from a crisis. Marcello shared a story where a CTO passed away, leaving behind a legacy system that no one else could maintain.

✅ Technical debt doesn’t just slow us down. It rewrites our priorities. When 60 percent of engineering time is going to maintenance, we’re no longer building. We’re just surviving.

✅ Clarity before code is what future-proofs a team. API-first design and visual tooling help reduce complexity, improve handover, and make systems more resilient to change.

👉🏻 When you’ve faced legacy constraints, what helped you finally take the first step forward?

🎧 The CTO Playbook is available on all major podcast platforms (link in comments).

- - - - -
👋🏽 I’m Adam, CTO coach, founder, and host of The CTO Playbook podcast. I help CTOs lead with clarity, grow with confidence, and drive strategic impact.
⛺️ The next CTO Basecamp cohort is soon to be announced. Join the waitlist and be the first to hear about it.

The CTO Playbook: Break Free. Build Smarter.

Why, why, why, why, why?

One of my favourite playbooks for retros, beautifully illustrated by Daniel.

Lessons learned. Writing a post-mortem. Five whys. Retrospective. Whatever you want to call it. 🎯

One of my absolute favorite things to do. Really going deep on why a project derailed, a deadline was missed, an outage in production or a technical release failure. Avoid doing it when you're still in the middle of the whirlwind. But as soon as you're out. Reflect and collect the experience. Improve. ♻️

Never do it to blame. It's not about finding someone to put the guilt on. Focus on the process, not the people. But don't shy away from the fact that it might sometimes be human error. Occasionally, it actually comes down to someone making a mistake. ⚙️

In my early days, I had to learn that an outage was entirely my responsibility (I forgot a WHERE clause in an UPDATE) and that I had burned roughly 250k rows in the database (lesson learned: begin transaction -> rollback transaction -> commit). 💸

Don't be afraid of searching for the root causes. It will make all of you better! And in the end, you've already paid for it, so why wouldn't you make the most of it. 💰

My mentor, Adam, was the absolute best at running five whys, and that's one of the things I'll probably never stop using.

📸: Lessons learned - “I should probably get some energy” at 25k+, it was already too late. Once deep fatigue sets in, you’re cooked.

taplio

The Battle

Marc van Neerven

Adam Horner

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreAdam Horner's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Marc van Neerven

Adam Horner

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Adam Horner's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreAdam Horner's LinkedIn Performance