Short answer
A fractional CTO sets direction: architecture, hiring, vendors, technical strategy. A product team subscription does the building: features, fixes and releases. If you have plenty of direction but not enough hands, you need a product team. If you have hands but no technical leadership, you need a CTO. Many growing companies need both.
What a fractional CTO does
A part-time technical leader, usually a few days a month. They help decide what to build and how, choose technology and suppliers, hire and coach developers, and represent technology to the board and investors. Most don’t write production code day to day, and they usually don’t bring a team to do it.
What a product team subscription does
Builds and ships. You add requests to a queue, a team works through them one at a time per track, and every release is reviewed by a senior developer. Our Embedded Plus plan includes a half-day CTO and planning session each month and a shared roadmap, so there’s some strategic time built in, but the centre of gravity is delivery.
Which do you need?
| Your situation | Start with |
|---|---|
| Clear priorities, not enough capacity | A product team |
| Developers in place, unclear direction | A fractional CTO |
| No developers and no technical leadership | A Discovery Sprint, then decide |
| Fundraising or due diligence coming up | A fractional CTO, often with a product team shipping |
| A fractional CTO with no one to build | A product team working to their plan |
How they work together
Well, usually. The fractional CTO owns the roadmap and the big decisions. The product team owns the queue and the quality of what ships. The CTO gets a reliable delivery team without hiring one, and the team gets a clear set of priorities from someone who knows the business. If you’re a fractional CTO advising clients who need build capacity, we’d like to talk.
Questions to ask either
- Who will actually do the work, and how senior are they?
- Who reviews it before it reaches us?
- Who owns the code and the accounts?
- What happens when we need more, or less?
Questions
Does the subscription include CTO time?
Embedded Plus includes a half-day CTO and planning session each month. Partner includes regular CTO strategy time and roadmap planning with your leadership. Extra CTO and planning days are £1,000 a day on any plan.
Can you work with our existing fractional CTO?
Yes. They set the priorities and we ship the queue. It’s a combination that works well.