CTO Chats with Wally Noveno, CTO of Kayamo

I’m just going to hop right in. So, we’re going to start with a very general question: How did you get into the IT field, and what has been your career journey to becoming the CTO?

Well, I’ve been programming since I was in middle school. Naturally, in high school, I chose computer science as my major, so that naturally, in and of itself, has been my direction ever since.

Okay. So, definitely a passion career. So, as you know, the IT landscape is definitely evolving really, really fast; new technologies emerge, and there’s a bunch of innovation. What challenges are you currently thinking about, and how are you addressing them within your organisation?

It’s mostly pressure from the other stakeholders who want to try the next big thing, right? I come up, “Oh, well, why don’t you try this? Let me try this.” Then it challenges me to, like, okay, I’ll try it; let’s see if it’s applicable to our platform. But for me, my opinion is that as long as the foundation is solid, and you don’t really have to keep up, like, every six months, as long as the security is good enough, you basically need to wait and see before you jump into the hype. However, it can be perceived as counterintuitive, especially in tech. Everyone wants to jump into the next big thing. But I want to see where others failed first. If you’ve seen the experience of others, then you can be more methodical and smart about going into a specific field application.

That makes a lot of sense. This also brings me to another question, actually. So, how do you balance the need for innovation that you have, obviously, with the demand for stability and security within your IT system?

I’m lucky to be working with a startup. The innovation comes naturally. When I was working for a larger bank, there were a lot of restrictions. Basically, you had to work within the confines of a regulated body, so that was difficult. Balancing that was harder. But again, right now, in my role as CTO for a startup, it’s much, much easier to convince the stakeholders that these things really will help us, really help the business case. And again, if the business case is solid, it comes naturally for us because it would make our lives easier. For example, I have a solid example: the business case for it was automated calling and AI voice calls. It was a no-brainer for us as we had to remind our customers when to pay. It was very easy to explain to our stakeholders. The cost was much higher than a couple more customer service agents. So again, the business case was the move.

If I understand this correctly, it seems like the main challenge, in terms of implementing innovation and staying ahead of the curve, is really the relationship with stakeholders and the whole process of approval.

Yeah. That’s technology. If your stakeholders don’t support it and don’t understand it, it will not see the light of day.

Completely. And do you see this, for example, as a big mistake that IT companies make? Or what would you think is the biggest mistake that IT-related companies make nowadays?

Some companies focus on the solution, and then they like to find a problem for the future. For example, they say, “Oh, we have this; we’re working on this technology; we have these ex-developers who have experience with this tech stuff.” But that doesn’t translate to the C-suite. You would want to know, “Do you have someone who has solved problems X, Y, and Z using your technology?”  Not the other way around. I think that some people position themselves that way, which I think is a waste of energy.

There are a lot of actions for the solution before a clear understanding of a problem.

Yes, exactly.

I guess that causes a lot of tension with the stakeholders, too, when the resources are put into something that is not thought of from the get-go. That makes sense, of course; it’s a very delicate balance to keep strong. With the current political atmosphere, I would say, around the world, how is the regulatory environment changing for your field, in particular, and how are IT leaders navigating these changes and shifts?

Well, there hasn’t been a really big impact yet, unlike FinTech specifically, to be honest. The BSP ( Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas; Central Bank of the Philippines) and the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) have been really forward-thinking for the last few years. They completely support digital transformation. The BSP even launched their own digital coin. For my field specifically, I think it’s really promising to have the support of the government in terms of launching new products and the types of products. I don’t think we’re going to have issues in that regard.

The government, in general, regulations seem to favour innovative policies, which would then kind of act as a tailwind in your favour. That’s amazing. I’m not sure everyone has the same experience, so that’s great to hear. And so, given all the shifts, this push for innovation, a lot of startups coming up and coming up with a lot of technologies, regulation adapting to innovation and trying to be as modern as possible, what trends or technologies have you seen have the biggest impact in the IT industry in general, which is possibly not AI, but, again, I’ll tell you to define the biggest impact?

Well, aside from AI, of course, it’s really low-code platforms. I started using those when I was at UnionBank. It really speeds up a lot of the processes, especially for, example, non-core tasks—not one of the main business tasks—when you just want to automate some small processes, and you don’t want to spend hundreds of hours of your developers working on this project or have someone from the business side do it themselves. Really, the no-code and low-code platforms are a really big blessing. And now, it’s blending a bit with AI, so it’s getting even better. Before, you basically had a rigid workflow for your automation, but now, with AI, you have AI making the decisions for you, so you don’t have to code for it. That has been a really great innovation in the past few years—automation with AI came back to AI. 

Yeah, it’s inevitable. As much as we’re trying to steer away from it, we always fall back to it. It’s a trend. How do you think this innovation that you’re talking about, in particular—the low-code, no-code platforms—will impact the sector, let’s say, in the upcoming three to five years? Is there anything else that you see could be a potential driver for further innovation, for maybe systemic change? How do you see the sector evolving, other than probably getting a bit more democratised with more people having access to IT capabilities through these platforms?

I think there will be a rising need for product management people, not necessarily developers. For the past ten years, or up to the last year or two, many of the developers have been the bulk of the IT industry and then just take the product owners and product managers. But I think, moving forward, there will be a diminishing number of actual developers. The developers that will be there will be building these automation platforms. But what will be a bigger opportunity is these product owners who understand the underlying platforms and how to use them. Developers could transition to that role because they know they understand the logic, but they don’t have to write all the code itself. It’s building the architecture of it. 

The biggest part of that is understanding the business side of things as well. They’re going to be the middle layer for stakeholders and technology. Developers, before, were basically living in their own world, and project managers would knock on their door and then ask, “How do we do this?” It democratises technology wherein the product owner, who understands the business processes, can now implement them on their own. That’s where the shift will go in terms of human resources or where the people in IT will go.

Yes, definitely. Now, I’m curious. Just to pick your brain, having this new workflow within IT processes, will it have some impact on the security of the code being created?

Here’s the thing: the impact is that you’re outsourcing the security. You’re trusting that the product is secure. But for smaller enterprises, I think that’s okay. You wouldn’t have the budget to have a dedicated scaling team. But if you work on a robust, secure platform, there’s already an accepted level of security that comes with it. 

But for bigger organisations, for example, at the Google level or Facebook level, of course, that’s different. But smaller to medium organisations that have their own IT team wouldn’t know much about security anyway. It’s better that they outsource it to, like, you know, a big organisation that has all of these security professionals that has all this testing involved and the certifications within their teams to secure platform instead of a 10-people start-up trying to secure their own things. 

Yeah, that makes sense. What do you think is the most critical skill for an IT leader today?

Translation. Again, going back to my prediction earlier, it’s really translating what the business needs into working technology. There’s no point in having—again, I’m repeating myself—the best technology if it doesn’t solve a problem and doesn’t make money for the company; it’s useless. Again, if you’re able to translate the direction or the strategy of the organisation into working technology in a fast and efficient manner, I think that’s the number one contribution. If you have developers or product owners, you’re driving that force to set this machine up to generate value for the company.

Yeah, and especially in the startup world, in particular, it does happen often that there’s a lot of enthusiasm around the technology, and the business part is neglected, which then causes failure, obviously. I see where you’re coming from, and I think it’s very important. It’s a very important piece of the puzzle that sometimes lacks or is lacking in tech teams, especially startups, I would say. Probably in corporate, too, but in startups, for sure, there are a lot of tests and learnings. What do you think is one question CTOs should be asking themselves today?

Good question. It’s a difficult one. Is it really just asking yourself, “Do I need to build a team? How do I need to create value?” The question an IT leader should always be asking is, “What I’m doing, is it creating value for the business?” For example, I worked for a bank before; some of the things that we did had no value, but it was just for compliance’s sake, a regulatory procedure. That’s okay. However, for startups, the founders will have a lot of ideas. You don’t have to throw them out, but you’re going to try to build them, especially young founders who are trying to build everything, all the features. But you have to ask yourself, “Are you bringing the value of what you’re good at?” That’s part of it.

I would love to understand how to approach mentoring and developing the next generation of IT leaders. How would you guide them, how would you build the team, and what skills would you be looking out for?

From a general perspective, I’m part of an engineering heads group in Manila. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them. It’s basically CTOs and IT leads of different companies here. That’s where we discuss and actually invite young and upcoming IT professionals and senior developers who want to join these sessions, usually to mentor them already. 

For my own organisation, I try to focus on building up their communication skills because the technical skills are already a given. You were able to be hired because you had the technical skills. You’re here because you have the technical skills. But a lot of people, again, are trying to get these stakeholders to understand why you’re doing what you’re doing. “Oh, do it.” No, you should be able to articulate, “Oh, we can’t do that; we have to do it this way.” I think that’s one of the key skills that actually made me reach this position. I was able to tell the stakeholders why we’re doing things the way we do them and even the fact that we could accept our mistakes and hold ourselves accountable. That’s really a big thing, especially for startups. You can admit that you made these mistakes and that you could pivot and fix things.