The truth? CMOs don't care about dev team performance. Not directly, anyway.
When you're responsible for growth, engagement and brand leadership, you're not obsessing over the sprint velocity or how clean the codebase is. You're asking questions like:
- Will the website launch on time—before the campaign drops?
- Can we roll out the new customer portal feature before the next board meeting?
- Why is that product page still not live after two weeks?
- What's blocking the new personalisation tool from going live?
These aren't technical questions—they're business performance questions. But more often than not, the answers lie in how well your dev team operates.
The Client vs the CMO
Here's the contrast.
The Client (the company) wants measurable, trackable performance, with internal stakeholders, Product Owners, CTOs and Digital Ops tracking uptime, deployment frequency, bug rates and ticket velocity.
The CMO, on the other hand, is looking at outcomes:
- How fast can we respond to market opportunities?
- Can we personalise content at scale without jumping through dev hoops?
- How agile are we in launching a new microsite, campaign or UX flow?
The gap between dev performance and marketing outcomes is where frustration can grow, or where real partnership thrives.
Why CMOs should start caring (a bit more)
You don't need to micromanage your dev team, but you should care about:
Lead times and bottlenecks
If every campaign depends on a bottlenecked dev team, your agility suffers. Are your systems and teams set up for rapid marketing enablement?
Deployment capability
If you can't push a homepage update without a release train and three levels of QA, you're not going to win the speed game.
Digital infrastructure
CMOs who invest in flexible CMS, design systems and headless architecture enable their teams to move faster—with or without dev involvement.
How to align with your development team
Do you want your dev team to perform better for marketing? Start with this:
- Create shared goals: Align on KPIs that matter to both sides—feature release velocity, campaign support SLAs or digital NPS scores.
- Ask better questions: Move beyond "Is it done?" to "What's blocking us?" or "How can we scale this?"
- Use the right tools: Whether it's a composable system like Umbraco or a more responsive development partner, invest in tech and teams that empower marketing speed.
Final thought
CMOs don't need to become tech experts, but they do need dev performance literacy. When your next big opportunity hits, the ability to move fast isn't just a dev problem; it's your competitive edge.
You don't need to manage your dev team, but you do need them aligned with your revenue goals.
At Growcreate, we bridge the gap between code and conversion. Because dev performance isn't just about clean releases; it's about marketing efficiency, better campaigns and faster ROI.
