Xavier Barry

The levers I work on as a CTO / CTPO

My expertise is not a catalog of frameworks. It was built in company-building, growth, crisis, and transformation contexts, working alongside founders, managers, and Product & Engineering teams. I step in when a company needs to make better decisions, regain execution capability, or evolve its organization without losing touch with the work.

Product & Engineering team design

Build clear, accountable teams that can keep improving.

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Product strategy & prioritization

Choose what matters, say no to the rest, and turn priorities into outcomes.

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Technical strategy & scaling

Prepare for growth without overengineering too early.

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Strategic advisory for founders and executives

Step back, make clearer decisions, and reduce risk on structural choices.

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Product & Engineering organization transformation

Make the organization clearer, more accountable, and better able to execute.

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Performance management & continuous improvement

Measure to decide and learn, not to generate more reporting.

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Applied AI & AI-augmented engineering

AI has significantly changed how I work without changing what I expect from a software system: clarity, reliability, security, and control.

I use it daily to accelerate research, analysis, product design, and software delivery. It has also brought me closer to code and deployment again—not by writing every line myself, but by orchestrating a workflow where specification, agents, review, tests, deployment, and monitoring remain under control.

The value therefore does not come from the model alone. It comes from the system built around it: context and instruction quality, problem decomposition, tool selection, guardrails, review, security, observability, cost control, and the ability to take over when needed.

  • Daily use of ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Codex, and Lovable depending on the task and desired level of autonomy
  • AI-assisted software engineering: specification, generation, review, testing, debugging, and iteration
  • Orchestrating the path from idea to production: Git, branching, CI/CD, deployment, instrumentation, and monitoring
  • Guardrails that preserve quality, security, maintainability, and cost control

Two concrete environments keep this approach grounded in reality: xavier-barry.fr, which I use as a lab for AI-assisted software production and deployment, and Mama Flow, a B2C product I cofounded and operate in production.

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Product & Engineering team design

Roles, interfaces, hiring, management, and capability development.

Clarify roles, build effective interfaces, and increase the organization’s ability to deliver and improve.

  • Build or reshape teams according to the product, company stage, and real constraints
  • Support CTOs, CTPOs, and managers as their scope grows
  • Clarify collaboration across Engineering, Product Management, Product Design, and QA
  • Evolve the organization without adding unnecessary coordination layers

Relevant experience: Bedrock Streaming, Jobo, Aster, Agicap, Braderie.Pro, Woonoz, SpeakPlus, Zola, Letmotiv

Product & Engineering team design

Product strategy & prioritization

Product vision, discovery, prioritization, roadmap, and value measurement.

Connect business priorities, user understanding, and execution capacity.

  • Build a roadmap that makes expected outcomes and trade-offs explicit
  • Introduce prioritization mechanisms that protect focus
  • Structure discovery and delivery without creating two disconnected worlds
  • Define objectives and indicators that support decisions rather than decorative reporting

Relevant experience: Bedrock Streaming, Jobo, Braderie.Pro, Woonoz, Letmotiv, Zola

Product strategy and prioritization

Technical strategy & scaling

Architecture, debt, reliability, automation, and technical direction.

Evolve architecture, practices, and tooling at the pace the company actually needs.

  • Move from a no-code or fragile foundation to an architecture suited to future needs
  • Balance technical debt, reliability, speed, and structural investment
  • Improve workflows and automate only where it meaningfully reduces friction
  • Align the technical direction with the product roadmap and business constraints

Relevant experience: Jobo, Aster, Woonoz, Zola

Technical strategy and scaling

Strategic advisory for founders and executives

Vision, governance, leadership, hiring, and high-impact decisions.

Bring experienced judgment to decisions that can shape the company for years.

  • Challenge Product & Engineering vision and choices with the CEO, CTO, or CPO
  • Clarify the leadership needed and the profiles to recruit
  • Prepare structural decisions for a board, fundraising process, or reorganization
  • Share relevant patterns from comparable situations without forcing a playbook

Relevant experience: Jobo, Aster, Braderie.Pro, Letmotiv, Zola, SpeakPlus

Strategic advisory for founders and executives

Product & Engineering organization transformation

Diagnosis, operating model, decision-making, adoption, and autonomy.

I step in when growth, complexity, or a change in operating model makes the organization harder to understand and weakens decision-making. The goal is not to add another layer of process, but to realign vision, responsibilities, prioritization, and execution.

This transformation depends as much on leadership, clear responsibilities, and supporting people as it does on changing rituals and tools.

  • Diagnose friction through real decisions, interfaces, and work flows
  • Clarify roles, responsibilities, and decision rights
  • Redesign prioritization paths across leadership, Product, and Engineering
  • Move toward a more product-led model when it supports the strategy
  • Support managers and teams until new practices are adopted
  • Measure progress with a small set of indicators linked directly to the issues being addressed

Relevant experience: Bedrock Streaming, Woonoz, Jobo, Aster, Letmotiv, Zola

Product & Engineering organization transformation

Performance management & continuous improvement

Objectives, indicators, learning loops, and decisions.

Give teams and executives useful signals to understand, decide, and adjust.

  • Define Product, Engineering, business, and people indicators connected to objectives
  • Build dashboards that are understandable and actually used
  • Create review loops that turn data into decisions
  • Use OKRs when the context justifies them, without making them a mandatory ritual

Relevant experience: Jobo, Aster, Braderie.Pro, Letmotiv

Performance management and continuous improvement
Nicolas Legendre - CTO @ Cards

Nicolas Legendre - CTO @ Cards

October 28, 2023

★★★★★

Translated from French

I am pleased to recommend Xavier, whose product expertise proved invaluable.

I had the privilege of benefiting from his valuable advice and support during our participation in the Hub612 Start to Scale acceleration program.

Xavier showed a deep understanding of the challenges growth-stage startups face, and he shared his experience and know-how in a way that was both inspiring and pragmatic.

His advice was essential in building our roadmap and contributing to our product and technology evolution.

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