You Need A Chief

I read two great posts, one was Does a company Need a Chief Engineer? and the other was Toyota’s Chief Engineer. The first is based on the second and both were interesting reading, especially from a business perspective.

The second post talks about the job of the Chief Engineer at Toyota and how important this position is. And then compares it to how poorly we do in software design. I think that’s a hard position to fill, and hard to groom someone for. Especially as we tend to want to move faster and not have the patience for someone to grow into the position.

But is it a chicken and egg thing? Can people grow into this role even if they work at multiple companies? Do we need this type of position in software before we can really advance the way we build things well? Do we need this in other industries?

This is probably a luxury in most companies, having a position that you can get people to strive for, and you can afford for someone to take a significant amount of time to learn. However if you can actually have someone that drives direction, that can see the forest and still understand the trees, then I think it can really give you a competitive advantage.