Fractional CTO or tech lead
Architecture decisions, hiring and engineering standards, owned by someone senior while you run the business.
Services
Three ways we help.
Pick one, or combine them.
01 · Fractional leadership
Lead and coach your team.
Not every team needs a full-time CTO, product lead or scrum master. Every team benefits from having one. We work inside your team a few days a week and leave it stronger than we found it.
Product management
Sharper roadmaps, ruthless prioritisation and discovery, so the team builds the right thing, not just the next thing.
Agile coaching and scrum mastery
Ceremonies that earn their time, less friction between plan and ship, and a habit of improving every sprint.
Why fractional
The experience of a senior hire. None of the commitment.
- Weekly or sprint-based, scaled up or down as you need
- Useful from the first week, no long onboarding
- Mentors the people you already have
- Helps you hire full-time when you’re ready
02 · Product development
Build it with us.
Before a line of code, we get into how your business actually runs: the processes, the spreadsheets, the workarounds. Then we build the simplest software that fixes it, and hand it over so your team owns it.
- A
Process review and opportunity map
Where technology genuinely helps, and where it doesn’t.
- B
Build vs. buy
We’re tech-neutral. If an off-the-shelf tool does the job, we’ll say so.
- C
MVP to production
Product management and full-stack engineering in one team, fixed scope and timeline.
- D
Handoff and your first hires
Documentation, knowledge transfer, and help hiring and training developers to take it on.
03 · AI & automation
Back-office innovation.
Every organization has a back office held together by email, spreadsheets and retyping. We work with your team on how it really runs, then use AI and automation to make it faster and more efficient, so your people spend their time on the work that needs them.
- A
Map how the work really flows
We sit with the people doing it: the emails, spreadsheets, retyping and workarounds that hold your back office together.
- B
Find where AI pays off
Reading documents, matching records, chasing what's missing, routing approvals. We size each one by hours saved and errors avoided.
- C
Build and automate
AI and automation built around your team and the systems you already use, with every result traceable to its source.
- D
Hand it over, or run it for you
Your team owns it with documentation and training, or we run it as a managed service and keep improving it.
Free tool
Not sure where to start? Describe one process and see what AI could take over.
Born from this work
Our flagship product
Penny2
The back office for fuel distributors.
Every supplier invoice, freight bill and sales invoice matched by bill of lading, the credits that are easy to miss, and the real margin on every load. Email and DTN intake, Sage-ready journals. We run it for you.
Field operations for fiber construction.
It started as a managed service: automating a fiber builder's work orders and field reports. It became ConstructIQ (cIQ), a platform that gives construction teams clear visibility into crew production and field reporting.
Visit ciqapp.io ↗How we work
Clear from the first call.
- 01
Discovery call
30 minutes, no pitch. We ask hard questions and tell you honestly if we’re the right fit.
- 02
Clear proposal
Fixed scope, transparent pricing, real timelines, before any work starts.
- 03
Embedded delivery
Short cycles and regular check-ins, working inside your team.
- 04
Lasting capability
Documentation and knowledge transfer, so you’re stronger after we leave.
Tech-neutral
We pick the simplest tool that solves the problem, not the one that bills the most hours.
Simple by default
Easy to build, easy to understand, easy to maintain five years from now.
Honest about fit
If we can’t add real value, we’ll tell you before you spend a dollar.