Outsourced CTO
Four arrangements, sold as though they were one.
Outsourced, fractional, interim and virtual describe different things. Picking on price rather than shape is how these engagements disappoint.
Nobody in the company owns the technical decisions, and the ones that matter are stacking up. You are not sure whether that means a hire, a contract, or somebody senior for two days a month.
This sits inside technical advisory. The distinction that decides the outcome is not seniority or cost — it is whether you need someone reachable or someone consulted. Service cto sets out the two questions that land you on one of the four arrangements, and what each one is bad at.
The arrangements
Outsourced
The technical function itself is contracted out rather than a person being hired into it. Suits companies where technology is necessary and genuinely not the differentiator.
As a service
A standing arrangement with defined decision rights, a stated response expectation, and a scheduled point to reconsider whether the shape is still right.
Interim cover
Full-time and temporary, with a defined end — the version that includes availability. Usually filling a gap while a permanent hire is in progress.
Remote delivery
All of the above, worked remotely. Sometimes marketed as a distinct product; it is a delivery method rather than a different arrangement, and the useful question is which of the three it actually is.
What gets agreed first
Four things, written down before day one: which decisions this person makes alone, what happens between sessions, what the exit looks like, and what is explicitly out of scope. None of that is unusual, and its absence is the best predictor of an engagement that ends badly.
Related engagements: technical advisory for the ongoing part-time version with a narrower remit, and technical due diligence where the immediate need is an independent read on a system rather than ownership of the function.
What you can inspect
Egress policy agent, running in your browser — a policy engine that, given a real two-minute capture, generated rules for 0 of 19 destinations and reported that rather than producing plausible output. Client work is confidential; what you can open is my own.
When none of these is right
If the honest answer to both questions is "reachable, indefinitely," none of the four arrangements fits. That is a full-time hire, and the version of this conversation that pretends otherwise is a way of postponing a decision you have already made.
Outsourcing the function is also the wrong move where technology turns out to be core after all. Companies discover this late, usually when the product becomes the differentiator, and rebuilding the capability from nothing is expensive.
Related
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- Related articlecosine match 0.68Outsourced, fractional, interim: which arrangement you needA supporting article for this service.Read article
- Related servicecosine match 0.69Fractional CTO servicesA neighboring service in the topic map.Explore service
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Bring the situation, not a brief.
Thirty minutes to work out which arrangement fits — including the one where you hire somebody permanent.