Interim Chief Technology Officer — Integration

Changing the engine while the shop is open

Reliability and change pull against each other in every technology organisation, and the pull is strongest in retail and distribution, where a checkout, a warehouse release or a delivery promise cannot be taken offline for a quarter while the platform is redesigned. The Interim Chief Technology Officer is appointed to do both at once: to make the services customers and colleagues depend on measurably more dependable, and to move the product and platform model forward without trading one for the other. It is an interim executive appointment with the authority to make the calls rather than recommend them, and the Group Chief Executive Officer is the person you answer to.

In practice that means drawing the map of technology decision rights and agreeing how far a store, warehouse or digital team may go on its own. It means fixing the reliability and cost data that every technology investment, engineering allocation and control change is weighed against. You will decide which inherited engineering commitments keep going, which are put on hold and which are closed, and you can stop any initiative that loads cost or risk onto a team that has not accepted it. Where an investment case ignores whether people will actually use the change, the operational work it relies on or how it could go wrong, you can decline it. You approve how engineering is led and how incidents and disputes are escalated, settle disagreements with the heads of stores, digital and distribution before engineering time is committed, and run the reliability reporting that tells the board what moved, what broke and what still awaits a decision.

The judgement the seat needs is a particular kind. Reliability work rarely has a launch date or a headline, and platform change usually has both, so the temptation is always to fund the visible thing. A good CTO in this position turns incomplete operating evidence into a decision that can be reversed, then tightens it as the facts improve. Some of the best early results will be platform work you halted, not new work you started.

Revenue of $815 million or more, 2,400 people and five countries: that is the size of technology estate you have already led. You have been through buy-side M&A without letting the story told to the board separate from the operating evidence, and the Group Chief Executive Officer will look closely at that experience alongside digital transformation and turnaround. The capabilities in focus are risk judgement at level 4, and product delivery, data and AI governance, and architecture at scale at level 3. A stop on engineering work will not wait for a show of hands among the markets, and the whole 18 months of reliability are yours to answer for.

Eighteen months of steadier service

The first ninety days should leave the Group Chief Executive Officer with an agreed reliability baseline, a clear owner for every critical service and the thresholds that govern platform change. Around month nine the product and platform roadmap should have been reordered with reliability at its centre, and inherited engineering commitments should have been kept, held or closed on stated grounds. By month 18 the new product and platform model should be operating with reliability controls that have been tested in real incidents, service ownership that nobody disputes and an engineering leadership bench strong enough to carry it on.

Three weeks with the people your choices touch

There are three stages, a week apart. The opening one, in week 1, puts you on screen, in confidence, with the Group Chief Executive Officer to discuss how you would weigh reliability against platform change. In week two the Board Chair sets you a live case to work through together. Week three is spent in person with the executive committee, the colleagues whose services and plans your choices will touch. Our written view of each stage reaches you within four working days.