CA World 2011: Q&A: Don Ferguson, CTO

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You've been at CA since 2008, what are your main responsibilities as CTO?

I am the CTO. I also held similar jobs at IBM as the chief software architect for IBM and then the chief architect for the IBM software group. So I've had a lot of practice at this.

Over the years, I evolved to focus on five things: architecture governance, reviewing designs, setting design criteria, making sure we are moving in a direction that makes sense architecturally and product simplification - the mechanics of making sure you incrementally get better products.

When I communicate it tends to be to help not to sell. My view is if customers are successful we'll be successful. It's my job to help them with technology, not products.

Governance is a heavy word. I like to think of it as a peer review. You can't worry about everything so I've got a set of things I tell the team I really care about. So user interface, data integration and so on. We do have reviews but I try and structure it as a peer review so they view it as their friends trying to help them not as going before the inquisition.

Companies do a very good job of business strategy but it's my job to bring the technology perspective in. If you try to adapt your business when the technical wave has hit, it's too late. For instance, we've been working on SaaS for a while. If you start working on SaaS once the SaaS wave has arrived it's too late. So part of it is looking at the way technology is evolving and preparing forwards for it for when the wave gets here. Then there's invention. If you were an illumination company in 1880, and you did the standard business model of customer wants and needs, you would get candles or [oil lamps]. You wouldn't get lightbulbs. It's my job to tell the company that there is a lightbulb.

Then there's communication. When I communicate I tend to not try and push what we are actually doing. When I communicate it tends to be to help not to sell. My view is if customers are successful we'll be successful. It's my job to help them with technology, not products.

There's a lot of communication internally. There's thousands of developers and engineers at CA, and I can't approve every decision they make. They are going to make dozens of decisions a day they need to know what we're doing, why we are doing it, where they fit into it. I can't tell them what to do, they're going to figure it out. They're smart so I need to give them a context for the framework.

Next it's community. I've always structured my job so that I have a very small organisation. I like to keep the engineers in with the product teams so they have management teams but I view myself as being the godfather for every engineer in the company so anyone can come to me at any time for any reason and I'll try and help them.

It's about being a trusted advisor. One of the things I observed a long time ago is there's a difference between intelligence and knowledge. Non technical executives are intelligent but they may not know technology. But they're intelligent so often they will ask me to come and explain things to them or advise them about technology.

Those are the things I focus on in my job.

Preparing for the waves way in advance must be challenging, so how do you take this from theory to reality?

[I need to] stay connected outside of the company. If I talk to my peers and go to academic conferences somebody will say something and suddenly realise. It's kind of like the snowball, the avalanche as the way these waves happen is a small number of people get an idea, and they start. Being out, talking to people, listening, going to conferences, being with customers you'll hear these little things and suddenly you start to realise that there's something emerging.

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