Fractional CTO

1. Understanding Your Product Idea and Long-Term Goal and Budget Also Feasibility Study

This is the first task essentially. The Fractional CTO understands what you want to create thoroughly, divide the total feature list of your product into “Regular features”, “Unique features”, “Complex Features” and goes to the next Step.

A Fractional CTO is very helpful in doing the feasibility study on the “Complex or unique features” to establish if they are doable or not with the current set of technologies in the world, and if doable then how wise it is to do them.

2. Help You Create the MVP Quickly:

A fractional chief technology officer will guide you to create a lean but useful MVP version of your product and launch within weeks and then put that into iteration for gaining more market.

3. Tech Stack Identification, Architecture Design, Building Technology and Product Development Roadmap:

Based on the specific demands of your product, a Fractional CTO will identify the Technical Stack to be used to achieve the goals and also considering the long term scalability of the product. He will also research and identify where to use open-source, where to use cross platform or native Tech, which external libraries to use, what kind of server to use and for which configuration and so on.

If you’re a small startup, then a Fractional CTO will definitely play the role of the solution Architect too. Which means, he will create the architecture of the product to be made starting from its data model, and will also help you in creating the wireframes or source someone to do the same.

Depending upon the Time-to-market goal and budget in hand, a Fractional CTO will strive to identify a development approach that works the best in the startup’s interest. Basically, a FCTO breaks down the whole product idea into “actionable achievable tasks”. The CTO also maps out Security requirements and finds out the easiest ways to implement early stage securities and leaving a scope for future improvements.

In such cases, AI consulting with our CTO helps you align these decisions with your existing stack and long term scalability goals through AI development services.

4. Identification of the Resources Needed, Selecting Them and Assigning Them the Tasks:

Fractional CTO will identify which different skill sets are needed to perform the tasks of development. And then they shortlist, interview and select the right engineers whether from the market or from the Tech Agency like Agicent. For example, he may choose a Full Stack developer to do both Front end and backend of your web app while a cross platform developer on react native or flutter to implement the mobile app to get more work done with less engineers.

5. Designing the Technology and Project Management Process:

The Fractional CTO will decide or participate in the decision of finalizing a developmental model which could be Agile or Extreme programming or good old waterfall. He’ll guide to design Delivery expectations, quality expectations, and schedules along with project manager. The Fractional CTO will also setup essential protocols related to software development i.e. setting up Code Repository, Backup Plans and strategy, Setting up staging/ test server or interim App distribution protocol, Live Server, Access Control, IP restrictions, Server security measures and much more. On a Funny note, most of the times the CTOs role starts from buying the domain and setting up Emails too – which means they are your go to guy whenever you are stuck at a Technology thing whether big or small.

6. Overseeing the Developmental Operations:

Although CTOs in big companies are not involved in day-to-day implementation and tech operations but in case of early Stage Startups they are all what they have in terms of Tech leadership. So they get involved in implementation as a Supervisor or a guide and review deliveries, give feedback to the team, help them with troubleshooting when needed, offer them alternative solutions and also take feedback from the development team and implement what is right.

7. Guiding the Startup in Sourcing the Talent:

Depending upon the project needs and budget, a Fractional CTO may suggest you to either outsource the whole project to a proper Development Company like Agicent or to distribute different components of your product to different vendors, or help you creating an in-house development team or may also ask you to use a freelancer. For smaller tasks, they may ask you to use a one-off freelancer while for perpetual work in a cost-effective way they’ll opt for an Software Outsourcing Company like Agicent.

8. Collaboration With Different Departments Whenever It Comes to Technology:

Your CTO is needed by all departments namely your development team, your marketing team or vendor, your Finance team, your Admin team, your HR Team (ofcourse) and anyone else. Most of the times they need a CTO for one-off basis except in the case of the development and HR team as they need a CTO on more day-to-day basis than others. But this Tech Leader must be efficient and broad enough to collaborate with all of them as they rely on the CTO level decisions when it comes to using the Technology for any operation of the startup.

9. A FCTO Represents You in Front of Investors or Relevant Audience:

Your investors would be curious to talk to your CTO always, to throw critical questions, asking about big technology aspects, security aspects, IPR things and so on. The Fractional CTO will be equipped with handy knowledge to answer all these questions, take feedback and also give reasons behind using the certain technology Stack.

10. Setting up KPIs and KRAs, and Remuneration and Incentives Benchmark:

A Fractional CTO will define KPIs for your product and teams and KRAs for your engineer team according to their job roles and responsibilities and also a method to measure and compare their performances. With a great knowledge of the Engineering market, a Fractional CTO will also help you in figuring out salaries and remunerations of the inhouse and offshore team alike.