Monthly product leadership
A part-time product lead for teams between first build and first product hire
Each month we keep your roadmap current, write requirements before every build cycle, re-rank the backlog against evidence, plan releases with acceptance criteria and coordinate delivery with your developers. You get the work of a product lead without hiring one full time.
What you get
What’s included
Roadmap upkeep
The roadmap updated as releases ship and evidence comes in, so it reflects what the team is building now.
Requirements before each build cycle
Developers start each cycle with written requirements and acceptance criteria they can test against.
Backlog prioritisation
New requests scored against goals, evidence, effort and risk, so the order stays defensible.
Release planning
Each release planned with its contents, its purpose and the criteria it has to pass.
Delivery coordination
Day-to-day product questions from developers answered, and progress tracked against the plan.
A good fit if
- Startups that shipped version one and now face a pile of requests
- Founders spending their weeks writing tickets and refereeing priorities
- Teams with developers but nobody owning what gets built next
- Gym groups and wellness brands running their own app with an outside dev team
Not included
- Design or development work
- Technical leadership, architecture and engineering hiring (see Fractional CTO)
- Marketing and growth execution
How it runs
From kickoff to handover
- First weeks
Get up to speed
We review the product, the backlog and how your team works, and bring the roadmap up to date.
- Each build cycle
Requirements ready
Requirements and acceptance criteria are written before the developers start.
- Each release
Plan and check
We plan what the release contains and check it against its criteria before it ships.
- Ongoing
Re-rank
As requests and results come in, the backlog and roadmap are re-ranked and you see the reasoning.
Questions
Questions about Fractional product planning
How much involvement do we get each month?
It's priced monthly, and the level of involvement depends on how often your team ships and how many people we're coordinating. We agree that with you before you commit.
Can you work with our in-house developers or another agency?
Yes. We can work alongside your own team or another agency, with clear lines on who owns what. Your developers keep building; we make sure they know what to build and why.
How is this different from the Fractional CTO?
Product planning decides what gets built and in what order. The Fractional CTO decides how it gets built: architecture, vendors and engineering hires. Some teams need one, some need both.
When should we hire a full-time product manager instead?
When product work fills a full week, usually once you have several developers shipping continuously or more than one product. Until then, part-time product leadership tends to be the better use of budget.
We just finished an MVP Planning Sprint. Is this the next step?
Often, yes. The sprint produces the scope, backlog and roadmap. Fractional planning keeps them current once the build starts and real users start asking for things.
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Ready to start Fractional product planning?
Tell us about your business. We'll confirm the scope and send you a start date.