How to become a CIO?
I really hate this kind of discussion, as if there's a mold that fits a good CTO or CIO.

Let's examine the qualities of a good executive rather:


Practices enabling and empowering engineers and local team leadership
Deflects bureaucracy from external sources
Helps remove organizational blockers to change and improvement
Does not mandate architecture from the top down
Acts as an evangelist for software first solutions
Promotes automation and solid foundations for solving problems rather than implementing patches
Knows how to avoid unrealistic deadlines and demands quality, but not perfection, over quantity of features
Uses data to solve problems and constantly evaluates the integrity of the data gathering
Values iterative development rather than long, cumbersome planning processes
Values education and internal training &amp; advancement over outsourcing


I'll add some more if I can think of them. We need to stop assuming a CTO or CIO is a list of resume qualifiers and start hiring people who really understand the process of building, maintaining, and delivering software from sun rise to sun set.