What does a fractional CTO actually do?

A fractional CTO is a senior technology leader who works with your business part-time - typically a few days a month rather than five days a week. Same seniority as a full-time CTO; sized to fit an established SMB. The job is direction: understanding what you've got, deciding what you actually need, and leading the work to get there. For a business of 20 to 150 people, that's usually all the technology leadership required - and the first 90 days are where you find out exactly what it's worth.

A fractional CTO's first 90 days, week by week

The shape below is the one we run at Segmentum. The details vary by business; the order doesn't.

Weeks 1-2: Listen before touching anything

The first job isn't technical. It's understanding the business - where revenue comes from, what's growing, what's straining, where you want to be in two years. Technology only makes sense in that context. A CTO who starts reorganising your systems before understanding your commercial reality is solving the wrong problem neatly. The early work is conversations: with you, with the people who run the day-to-day, and with whoever currently keeps the systems alive.

Expect direct questions in that fortnight: which customers actually make money, which process you'd least like to explain to an insurer, what breaks every month-end and who fixes it.

Weeks 2-4: Map the estate

Then comes the inventory. Every system, tool, integration and supplier the business runs on - what each one does, who owns it, what it costs, and how it connects to everything else. Most businesses have never seen this written down in one place. The map is where the surprises live: the duplicate tools doing the same job, the licences for people who left two years ago, the critical process that depends on one spreadsheet and one person, the integration nobody understands and everyone's quietly afraid to touch.

The map doesn't need to be clever. A clear register - system, purpose, owner, cost, dependencies - beats a glossy audit deck every time.

Weeks 4-8: Find the gaps and the risks

With the map in place, the pattern emerges. Where's the business exposed - security, key-person risk, a system nearing the end of its supported life? Where's money leaking? Where is technology actively slowing the business down, and where is it quietly fine and best left alone? This is the part that separates leadership from maintenance. The goal isn't a list of everything that could be improved - that list is always endless and never useful. It's a short list of what actually matters, ranked by what it's costing or risking.

At Segmentum this is where the Method does its work: everything found gets sorted into Foundational, Structural or Iterative, because the order you fix things in matters more than the length of the list.

Weeks 8-12: A plan you own

The output is a plan tied to commercial impact - not a technology wishlist. What to fix first, what it'll take, what it's worth, and what can wait. Written so you and your leadership team can read it and make decisions from it, without needing it translated back to you.

Crucially, the plan is yours. Not locked to a supplier, not dependent on keeping anyone on a retainer to make sense of it. If you parted ways the next day, you'd still have a clear, costed direction for your technology. That's the test of whether the work was done for you or for the person selling it.

What should you have in your hands by day 90?

Concretely, five things:

• A complete map of your technology estate - every system, supplier, integration and cost in one view, most of it written down for the first time.

• An honest risk picture - short and ranked, not a hundred-line spreadsheet of everything that could theoretically go wrong.

• A costed, sequenced plan - what to fix first, what it'll take, what it's worth, and what can safely wait.

• A supplier view - what each contract is actually buying you, and which renewals deserve a harder conversation.

• The ability to make technology decisions without translation - because everything above is written for you, not for another technologist.

If a first 90 days doesn't produce something close to that list, ask why.

What shouldn't you expect in the first 90 days?

You shouldn't expect everything fixed in ninety days - anyone promising that is selling something. You shouldn't expect a rip-and-replace; good leadership keeps what works. And you shouldn't expect to be buried in jargon. The first ninety days are about replacing fog with clarity: a true picture of what you've got, an honest read on what's working and what isn't, and a plan that tracks where the business is going.

How much of your time will it take?

Less than you might fear. A few hours of conversation in the first fortnight, when the listening happens. After that, roughly an hour a week - questions answered, findings sanity-checked, one session midway to make sure the emerging picture matches reality, and a proper working session at the end to go through the plan. Your key people give an hour or two each along the way.

Be wary of anyone who promises clarity with no time from you at all. The plan has to be built around your business - which means it has to be built with you in the room, at least occasionally.

The first 90 days has a name

That first stretch has a name at Segmentum - a Discovery. It's fixed in length, it's concrete, and the plan you walk away with is yours. You come out the other side knowing exactly what you're dealing with and what to do about it.