A Non-Technical CIO Performance Review Template for CEOs

You are a CEO who is spending more on tech and getting less back.

You hear bold pitches about AI, customer experience, and automation. Yet projects slip, outages hit at the worst time, and the board keeps asking if cyber risk is “under control”. Vendors speak in acronyms. Your chief information officer speaks in systems. The numbers that matter to you, margin and growth and trust, feel blurry.

You do not need another tool. You need a clear, business-focused CIO performance review template for CEOs that serves as a performance appraisal, turning fuzzy opinions into facts, and facts into decisions.

CTO Input works with mid-market leaders in exactly this spot, helping them conduct a performance appraisal and performance evaluation of technology leadership and reset the plan in plain language. By the end of this article, you will have a simple CIO performance template you can use in your next CIO review cycle, even if you never want to talk about servers again.

Why Non Technical CEOs Need a Simple CIO Performance Review Template

When the CIO performance appraisal is vague, the business pays the price.

Projects drift away from strategy. Teams chase tools instead of outcomes. Cyber risk becomes a hope, not a plan. You feel this in real terms: weaker margins, tense board updates, and customers who notice when systems fail at the wrong moment.

A weak or unclear performance appraisal often sounds like this: “IT worked really hard this year” or “We had some bumps but the team responded well.” None of that helps you decide if this CIO can carry the next phase of growth.

A clear CIO performance appraisal template for CEOs flips the script. It focuses on outcomes you can see and feel:

• Are we growing faster because of technology, or in spite of it?
• Are outages and incidents dropping or rising?
• Are we spending smarter, not just more?

You are not judging the CIO’s technical depth or employee performance alone. You are judging how well they convert spend, people, and vendors into revenue, margin, trust, and control, including problem solving skills during system failures.

If you want examples of how structured performance appraisal methods work in other roles, HR leaders often use templates like the performance management review templates from Hibob as part of a performance management system. Your CIO deserves the same level of clarity from performance appraisal methods, built around business outcomes.

The risk of guessing about CIO performance

When you rely on gut feel or vendor praise, you give up control.

A major system upgrade slips a quarter, then another. Sales misses their number, but the explanation lives in a technical story you cannot challenge. A “minor” security issue is downplayed, then shows up in a customer renewal call, as the Critical Incident Method would highlight in a proper performance evaluation.

The fallout is real:

• Lost deals when demos fail or onboarding stalls
• Higher operating cost from workarounds and manual fixes
• Leadership churn as business heads blame “IT” and trust erodes

Some boards respond by asking for more detail. You get 40-page decks, charts in foreign units, and risk rankings that do not tie to dollars. Without a simple job performance evaluation form, you are still guessing about CIO performance evaluation.

Switching from technical jargon to business results

A strong performance appraisal template changes the conversation from servers to outcomes.

Instead of asking, “How is our infrastructure?” you ask:

• Is technology helping sales close faster?
• Did we reduce risk in ways our board would understand?
• Did we improve margin in the parts of the business that matter most, using Application Performance Management (APM) for measurable results?

Resources like this CIO performance appraisal example on SlideShare show how detailed CIO reviews can be, often incorporating APM templates. Your version does not need that level of complexity. It just needs to turn jargon into a short set of clear business questions.

This shift gives you control. You can coach a good chief information officer, or replace a poor fit, with confidence rather than guesswork.

Core Sections To Include In Your CIO Performance Review Template

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

Build your template around 4 or 5 sections that any non-technical CEO can score using simple rating scales like Exceeds, Meets, or Needs Improvement as part of defining performance metrics for the chief information officer’s employee performance. These performance appraisal methods draw from established practices like the BARS method to ensure your CIO performance template supports clear performance evaluations.

Strategic alignment with growth and profit goals

Ask if the chief information officer is running “IT projects” or driving your strategy using performance appraisal methods such as Management by Objectives (MBO).

Look for:

• A clear roadmap linked to your top 3 business goals
• Willingness to say no to nice-to-have work
• Visible impact on revenue or margin, not just activity

Sample questions (KPI samples):

• Which top 3 business goals did technology directly support this year?
• Which projects should we stop because they do not support our strategy?
• Where did technology help us win or protect revenue?

Rate the CIO on clarity of roadmap, discipline in focus, and proof of business impact.

Project delivery, reliability, and customer impact

This is about execution you can trust, incorporating monitoring plans and tools like Application Performance Management (APM).

Focus on a few numbers you understand: on-time delivery of major projects tied to Service Level Agreement (SLA) targets, serious outages, and how quickly customers feel recovery after an issue.

Sample questions:

• Were our top projects delivered on time and on budget, per our Service Level Agreement (SLA)?
• How many serious incidents hit customers or reached the board?
• When things broke, how long until normal business was restored, supported by Application Performance Management (APM) insights?

Ask the CIO to talk in business terms, like missed shipments or delayed onboarding, not in system codes. For deeper technical measures or a job performance evaluation form, you can point them to tools such as the CIO assessment template on ProjectManagement.com, but your review should stay in plain language.

Cybersecurity, risk management, and compliance

You do not need to be a cyber expert to ask sharp questions about problem solving skills in this area.

Keep it simple and direct:

• Do we have a clear view of our top 5 technology and cyber risks?
• Have we had any avoidable incidents this year? Why did they happen? Reference an Incident Response Template for structured handling.
• Are we audit and regulatory ready in our key markets?

Then ask yourself: Do I feel more or less confident about risk than a year ago? Does the CIO bring up risk early with strong decision making skills, or only after something breaks or a regulator calls?

Rate them on clarity, honesty, and progress, not fear, as part of your performance evaluation.

Leadership, communication, and cross team trust

Your CIO is part of the leadership team, not a back-office function.

Look at how they work with peers, evaluating teamwork skills and communication effectiveness:

• Do other leaders feel heard and supported by the CIO?
• Are there fewer escalations about IT, or more?
• Does the CIO turn complex issues into 1 to 3 clear options with tradeoffs?

Gather short feedback from 2 to 4 department heads using a 360 degree appraisal approach. Ask them, “In one sentence, how is IT helping or slowing your goals?” Base the rating on partnership and trust, not on who knows more acronyms.

Budget, cost control, and value for money

Technology spend should feel like an investment, not a black hole, with administering activities focused on performance appraisal.

Sample prompts:

• Did we stay within the agreed technology budget without surprise overages?
• Where did we free up spend or renegotiate vendors, per an optimization plan template?
• Can you show how big projects tie back to revenue, margin, or clear risk reduction?

You do not need a complex model for this performance review. You need fewer surprises, cleaner numbers, and honest tradeoff conversations, not long technical justifications. Some leaders find it helpful to review other performance formats, such as the CIO performance review template on ClickUp, to sharpen how they talk about value using proven rating scales.

A Ready To Use CIO Performance Review Template For CEOs

Now turn those sections into a performance appraisal you can use.

Start with basic information: CIO name, role title, review period, and who is giving feedback. Then add a short role summary in plain language, like a job description; for example: “Owns technology strategy, delivery, and risk to support our growth and margin targets.”

Next, include 3 to 5 scored sections as key elements of this performance appraisal:

1. Strategic alignment
2. Delivery and reliability
3. Cybersecurity and risk
4. Leadership and communication effectiveness
5. Budget and value for money

For each, give a rating using rating scales (Exceeds, Meets, Needs Improvement) via the BARS method, along with a few lines of evidence such as KPI samples. In Delivery and Reliability, incorporate insights from APM templates to support your performance evaluation.

Add space for a brief self appraisal from the chief information officer, focused on wins, misses, and lessons. Include a CEO summary of the performance evaluation, where you state whether confidence in the CIO is rising, stable, or falling.

Close with 3 to 5 goals and objectives for the next year using Management by Objectives (MBO), tied to business outcomes like revenue, margin, customer experience, and risk. This performance appraisal structure, drawing on proven performance appraisal methods, lets you compare year over year in your performance management system and gives your CIO a clear playbook for employee performance instead of a fuzzy wish list.

How to use this template in your next CIO review

Use this performance appraisal as a simple, repeatable process for administering activities.

1. Write a short job description summary and list last year’s top 3 goals.
2. Gather input from 2 to 4 key leaders about how IT helped or hurt them, using a 360 degree appraisal to assess teamwork skills and the Critical Incident Method to document specific wins and failures.
3. Ask your chief information officer for a one-page self appraisal before the meeting.
4. Meet for 60 to 90 minutes with the job performance evaluation form in front of both of you.
5. Agree on rating scales for the performance evaluation, key improvements in problem solving skills and decision making skills, and a small set of concrete goals tied to business outcomes with monitoring plans, drawing on proven performance appraisal methods.

If you feel you lack the expertise to judge employee performance fairly, a fractional CIO or CTO partner like CTO Input can sit on your side of the table, translate technical details like Application Performance Management (APM) and Incident Response Template, and act as an independent advisor during the performance appraisal.

Conclusion

A clear CIO performance template provides CEOs with structured performance appraisal methods to judge the chief information officer’s performance evaluation in technology leadership using business terms, not jargon. You do not have to be an IT expert to demand alignment with growth, reliability, and risk outcomes that your board and customers care about.

Picture the upgrade with an optimization plan template: cleaner dashboards, fewer technology surprises, a CIO who talks in outcomes and demonstrates strong teamwork skills with clear goals and objectives, and a board that trusts the plan instead of probing for hidden risk.

If you want a seasoned guide for this, visit CTO Input to explore how fractional CIO, CTO, and CISO leadership can help you evaluate and upgrade your technology leadership. For more practical, plain-language guides on tech, risk, and growth, browse the CTO Input blog at https://blog.ctoinput.com.