The First 90 Days as CTO: From Stepping In to Scaling Up

By Mike Pritula

Daniel got the title on a Monday. By Wednesday the roadmap was due and the lead engineer had quit. Nobodyhanded him a manual. This book is the one he needed.

That is the job. You stop being the best engineer in the room and become the person every hard decision rollstoward - and most new technology leaders spend their first quarter reacting. Not for lack of skill. Because noone ever taught them what the role actually is once the code stops being theirs. I have watched it play outacross hundreds of technology leaders in my program, and the ones who steady themselves all do the samething: they run the role as a system instead of a scramble.

The CTO Operating Map is that system - the six things a technology leader runs at once: the role, strategy, teams, products, scaling, and innovation. Work the map in sequence and the chaos turns into a plan you canrun week by week, from your first 90 days to the day the company outgrows everything you built.

Every framework, decision filter, and template Daniel needed is printed inside the book - no email walls, nodownloads, just turn the page.

Will Larson's The Engineering Executive's Primer runs about $24.60, and a single hour with a fractionalCTO costs more than $200. This book costs less than dinner.

Buy it. Read it tonight. Walk in Monday with a plan.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H598DMSG
• ISBN13: 9798181561069
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 392 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"