You've decided to bring on a fractional CTO. Maybe you've already hired one. Now what?
The value you get from a fractional CTO depends heavily on how you work together. The relationship structure matters. The communication patterns matter. How you engage matters.
Here's how to make the engagement successful.
Set Clear Expectations Upfront
Define what success looks like
Before diving into work, align on outcomes. What does success look like in three months? Six months? A year?
Be specific:
- "We'll have selected and begun implementing a new ERP system"
- "Our development team will be shipping reliable code with proper code review processes"
- "We'll have a technology roadmap aligned with our three-year growth plan"
Vague expectations ("improve our technology") lead to vague results. Clear expectations enable clear accountability.
Agree on scope
What's included in the engagement? What's out of scope?
Typical boundaries to clarify:
- Strategic guidance vs. hands-on implementation
- Ongoing advisory vs. specific project work
- Which teams or systems they'll engage with
- What decisions they can make vs. recommend
A fractional CTO can't do everything. Agreeing on focus areas upfront prevents scope creep and ensures attention goes where it matters most.
Establish the rhythm
How often will you meet? Through what channels will you communicate? What's the expected response time for urgent issues?
A typical structure:
- Weekly touchpoint: 30-60 minutes to review progress, discuss issues, make decisions
- Monthly strategic review: Longer session to step back and assess direction
- Async access: Slack or email for questions between meetings
- Quarterly planning: Align technology direction with business strategy
Find a rhythm that works for your situation. Too little contact and you lose momentum. Too much and you're paying for meetings instead of outcomes.
Prepare Them for Success
Provide context
Your fractional CTO is joining a situation already in progress. Help them understand it.
Share:
- Business strategy and goals
- Current technology landscape
- History of key decisions (especially ones that went wrong)
- Team dynamics and politics
- Budget constraints and priorities
- Previous vendors and why relationships ended
The more context they have, the faster they can contribute meaningfully. Don't make them discover critical information through archaeology.
Grant appropriate access
A fractional CTO can't help with what they can't see.
Provide access to:
- Systems and documentation
- Key team members
- Financial information relevant to technology decisions
- Vendor contracts and relationships
- Board or investor communications (if relevant)
If you're restricting access, ask why. Sometimes it's appropriate (confidential HR matters, for example). Often it's just habit—and that habit limits value.
Make introductions
Introduce your fractional CTO to the people they'll work with. Explain their role. Set expectations for how interactions should work.
People need to know:
- Who this person is and why they're here
- What authority they have
- How to engage with them
- That leadership supports the engagement
Skipping introductions creates confusion and resistance. Proper setup enables productive relationships.
Communicate Effectively
Be honest about problems
The temptation is to present a sanitised version of your situation. Don't.
A fractional CTO is there to help solve problems. If you hide problems, you prevent solutions. If you minimise challenges, you get minimised responses.
Share the uncomfortable truths:
- That vendor relationship that's falling apart
- The developer who's not working out
- The project that's behind schedule
- The technical debt everyone's afraid to touch
Honest input leads to useful output.
Ask questions
You're paying for expertise. Use it.
Don't just accept recommendations—understand them. Ask why. Ask about alternatives. Ask about risks and trade-offs.
Good fractional CTOs welcome questions. They'd rather explain their reasoning than have you follow advice you don't understand. Questions also help them calibrate their communication to your level.
Push back when needed
Fractional CTOs aren't infallible. They might recommend something that doesn't fit your specific context. They might not understand a constraint you haven't fully explained.
If a recommendation doesn't feel right, say so. Explain your concern. A good fractional CTO will either adjust their recommendation or explain why your concern is less relevant than you think.
Healthy pushback leads to better outcomes. Silent disagreement leads to implementation problems.
Share the full picture
Technology decisions don't happen in isolation. Business context matters.
Keep your fractional CTO informed about:
- Changes in business strategy
- New market opportunities or threats
- Budget changes
- Team changes
- Vendor issues
- Upcoming events (fundraising, audits, acquisitions)
They can only give good advice if they have good information. Treating them as a trusted advisor means sharing what a trusted advisor needs to know.
Maximise Their Time
Come prepared to meetings
Fractional CTO time is expensive. Don't waste it on things you could have prepared.
Before meetings:
- Review actions from last meeting
- Prepare questions and decisions needed
- Gather relevant information
- Identify the most important topics
A well-prepared meeting accomplishes more in 30 minutes than an unprepared meeting accomplishes in an hour.
Batch decisions
Rather than interrupting with every small question, batch non-urgent items for your regular touchpoints.
Keep a running list of topics to discuss. Prioritise before the meeting. Work through the most important items first.
Save async communication for genuinely time-sensitive matters.
Leverage async communication
Not everything needs a meeting. Some things work better in writing.
Use async communication for:
- Status updates
- Questions that need thought before responding
- Document reviews
- Non-urgent feedback
Reserve synchronous time for discussions, decisions, and complex topics that benefit from real-time dialogue.
Delegate appropriately
A fractional CTO should focus on high-value work. Don't ask them to do tasks that others could handle.
Good use of fractional CTO time:
- Architectural decisions
- Vendor negotiations
- Strategic planning
- Technical due diligence
- Mentoring senior developers
Poor use of fractional CTO time:
- Data entry
- Routine documentation
- Basic research others could do
- Administrative tasks
Be ruthless about protecting their time for work that requires their expertise.
Enable Execution
Act on recommendations
The best advice is worthless if you don't act on it.
When your fractional CTO makes recommendations:
- Decide whether you're going to follow them
- If yes, commit resources and timeline
- If no, explain why (maybe they'll offer alternatives)
Accumulating recommendations without action wastes money and damages the relationship. If you're not ready to act, say so.
Remove blockers
Sometimes recommendations stall because of internal obstacles:
- Budget approvals that don't happen
- Team members who resist change
- Vendor contracts that need renegotiation
- Process bottlenecks
Your job is to remove these blockers. The fractional CTO can advise on how—but you have to make it happen.
Follow through on commitments
If you committed to having the vendor contracts ready by Tuesday, have them ready. If you said you'd schedule that stakeholder meeting, schedule it.
Fractional CTOs can only work with what they're given. Broken commitments slow everything down and signal that the engagement isn't a priority.
Build Toward Independence
Transfer knowledge
A good fractional CTO engagement builds internal capability, not dependency.
Look for opportunities to:
- Have team members shadow key activities
- Document processes and decisions
- Build internal expertise in critical areas
- Reduce reliance on the fractional CTO over time
Ask your fractional CTO explicitly: "How do we build this capability internally?"
Develop your team
The fractional CTO should be making your team better, not just doing work your team can't do.
Use them to:
- Mentor promising developers
- Coach technical leads
- Improve processes and standards
- Raise the technical bar
A year into the engagement, your team should be stronger than when you started.
Plan for the future
At some point, you might outgrow fractional support. That's success, not failure.
Discuss openly:
- When would a full-time CTO make sense?
- What would that person need to look like?
- How should we transition?
A good fractional CTO helps you plan for their eventual replacement if that's the right path. They're not trying to make themselves indispensable—they're trying to make your business successful.
For guidance on when to make the shift, see our fractional vs full-time decision framework.
Warning Signs
Watch for these red flags in the relationship:
Recommendations without explanation. A fractional CTO should explain their reasoning, not just dictate decisions.
Dependency increasing over time. You should be getting more capable, not less capable, as the engagement continues.
Avoiding accountability. If things go wrong, a good fractional CTO owns their part rather than deflecting.
Scope creep without discussion. The engagement should stay focused on agreed priorities, not expand endlessly.
Inability to say "I don't know." Nobody knows everything. Pretending otherwise is a red flag.
If you see these signs, address them directly. If they persist, reconsider the engagement.
Getting the Relationship Right
A fractional CTO relationship is a partnership. You're providing context, access, and commitment. They're providing expertise, guidance, and execution support.
When both sides show up fully, the results compound. Technology decisions improve. Team capability grows. Technical debt decreases. The business operates more effectively.
When either side under-invests, the engagement stalls. Meetings become routine. Recommendations pile up unactioned. Value disappears.
Choose to make it work. The investment is worth protecting.
Want to discuss how fractional CTO support could work for your business? Book a call with our team.
