Understanding the role of a Fractional CTO

When and why would you hire one...

Introduction: The Evolving Role of a CTO

I’m going to show my age here but when I was starting off my career in tech I actually wanted to be a CIO.  Those were the (mostly) guys sitting on the board with the CEO and CFO whereas the CTO would report to the CIO and be in charge of the boring tech stuff, the CIO handled all of the interesting projects.

Something happened a while ago where the role of the CTO got thrust into the limelight and now the term CIO is better known as “Chief Investment Officer” rather than “Chief Information Officer”.

If you are to ask me, it was the explosion in start-ups in the early 2000s that propelled the role of the CTO into the limelight, CIOs were stuffy old people sitting on boards, the CTOs were the cool ones building tech.

Regardless of the reason, people know about CTOs now, however, from the discussions I’ve had running Atom CTO, there’s still a lot of confusion about what we do, when to hire one and what to expect when you have hired one.  People know even less about what it means to have a Fractional CTO.

My hope is that by the end of this article you’ll have a better picture about what fractional CTOs do, what the benefits of having one are and when to consider bringing someone on board.

What is a Fractional CTO?

At a very basic level, a fractional CTO is a person that will dedicate a part of their time to help you with your tech needs at a senior level.

The fact that they are fractional means that they won’t be with you full time but the quality and intensity of the work you’ll get from them should be the same as if they are with you full time.

So this is just another name for a consultant right?

Well no. For me, the most important difference between a consultant and a fractional CTO (or any fractional resource for that matter) is ownership.

I’ve been a consultant. In those days, I’d go into work for a client, do the project work, make some recommendations and move on. The real responsibility for owning the decisions and the implementation of the recommendations rested with the client, not me.

As a fractional CTO the buck stops with you. You are a part of the company, you are a part of the leadership team.  The decisions you make will impact the business and it will be up to you to fix things if they don’t go quite as expected.

This is how it should be….and this is how you should view a fractional CTO when you bring them on board.

Why should I hire a Fractional CTO?

Look around you.  

Do you have anyone in your team that has a holistic view of tech within your business?  

Is there someone thinking about the strategic direction for technology and how it should align with your business strategy?

Do you have the budget to pay a full time CTO?

Are you thinking about implementing tech within your business but the only tech experts you have are the guys that are updating your laptops and PCs and managing your email?

You should hire a fractional CTO when you are looking spend some significant money on technology so that it will improve your business, whether that is:

• Opening up new revenue streams to increase your top line.

• Creating efficiencies through automation to decrease your bottom line.

• Jumping on the next shiny new bandwagon and do something with blockchain or AI or the metaverse.

• Etc. etc.

If you are thinking of spending on tech but have no tech expertise then you need to get in someone that can tell you how to spend your money wisely.

You also want someone to come in that is accountable for the success or failure of whatever initiatives you decide to move ahead with.  The worst feeling is when you’ve implemented a new system, you’ve paid the consultant a lot of money and they have left you with something that you kind of wanted but isn’t quite 100% what you really wanted or what they promised you.

A good fractional CTO will not let that happen and at the very least will be accountable for turning things around.

What should I know when hiring a Fractional CTO?

The most important thing you need to know is that not all fractional CTOs are made equal.  We all have our different strengths.

Just like ice cream, we come in many flavours.  You have to ask yourself which flavour you want.  

At Atom CTO, we have a network of CTOs and each of them have their own specialities, I’ll name a few:

• Generalist: Someone who has a broad knowledge of tech and may have worked across many industries but never really specialised in a single area

• Technical Specialists: Those that are blockchain fanatics or only do NLP when it comes to AI, these are people that thoroughly love their technical area

• Strategic: Forward thinkers who are great at running operations and working with the business to plan ahead

• Zero to One: People that only want to do the hard stuff at the beginning and get their hands dirty to get a project up and running but once it is live, they want to move onto the next challenge

• IPO Specialists: CTOs that can get you ready for IPO

• Growth Specialists: Those that have great experience in scaling tech teams but don’t really know how to deal with smaller ones

The list goes on as you can imagine but the biggest misconception I feel that occurs with CTOs is that people think that they all code.  If you’ve been in the game as long as I have, you may dabble with new tech from time to time but you don’t have the time to code as you spend most of your time in meetings or writing documents.

What do Fractional CTOs do?

We come to the million dollar question because the answer to this is the answer to what value a fractional CTO will bring.

Remember that you are hiring a fractional CTO because you cannot afford to pay full salary for a highly experienced senior tech resource but you need the knowledge that one brings.

Fractional CTOs will do different things depending on what stage and state your business is in.

If you’re looking to bring on someone early on in a start-up, the fractional CTO won’t be the coder (sure you can give a coder the title of a CTO but that doesn’t mean they are fulfilling the role).  

The fractional CTO will help you set the roadmap for tech, help shape operations, be risk focused, be security minded, will help you understand that an app is not a business and that you will need tech in different parts of the organisation in order to go to market effectively and that you will need to tie that tech together so you can have a holistic view of your business.

For scale-ups the fractional CTO will look towards setting the culture for the tech organisation, building the team, spending about 80% of the time on operations and 20% on strategy. The fractional CTO will be there to ensure that you build new tech whilst not losing sight of serving your existing customers.

For SMEs and evolving businesses the fractional will look more towards strategy, how can you use tech to drive business, how can you gain more customers, retain the ones you have and lower the cost of doing business.  Fractional CTOs help with digital transformation, compliance, governance, all of the the unsexy activities you need to do as an established business.

Of course there is more to this but my aim by giving these examples is that a good fractional CTO, someone that is more senior will have been there and done all of these things and they will be bringing their knowledge to bear on your business - albeit for a fraction of their time. 

In Conclusion

The way of work is changing. Tech is getting more expensive. We no longer need to be in the office and you as a business owner don’t need to have a full time CTO if you don’t need one or can’t afford one.

What you cannot afford is to spend time, money and effort on tech with no one to manage it so when you are thinking about your next big tech spend, consider adding a budget line for a good fractional CTO.