# Fractional CTO Scoping Template

By Tanuj Garg · https://tanujgarg.com · Based on: https://tanujgarg.com/blog/fractional-cto-tech-partner-playbook

Fill this in before you start an engagement. If you cannot fill in a section, that is a finding in itself.

## 1. Business context

- Company stage and runway:
- Next 2–3 business milestones (launch, fundraise, big customer, new market):
- What is risky or sensitive about the next 6 months:

## 2. The outcomes you want (pick 2–3 that can be measured)

| Outcome | How we will measure it | Today | Target |
|---------|-----------------------|-------|--------|
| Fewer scaling incidents | incidents per month | | |
| More stable API | error rate / p95 latency | | |
| Lower infrastructure cost | monthly cloud bill | | |
| Faster releases | releases per week, rollback rate | | |

If an outcome has no number attached, rewrite it until it does.

## 3. Decision areas the fractional CTO owns

Tick what is in scope:

- [ ] Architecture direction and key trade-offs
- [ ] APIs and integrations
- [ ] Databases and data model
- [ ] Deployment, environments and release safety
- [ ] Performance and reliability
- [ ] Observability and incident response
- [ ] Cloud cost
- [ ] Security basics
- [ ] Hiring input and interviewing
- [ ] Vendor and tool selection
- [ ] Investor and customer technical conversations

Decisions that stay with you:

## 4. System boundaries and constraints

- Systems in scope:
- Systems out of scope:
- Compliance or contractual constraints (health, payments, student data, enterprise customers):
- Access needed (cloud accounts, repos, monitoring, tickets):

## 5. Cadence

- Weekly decision session (length, day):
- Async review of documents and diagrams (where, turnaround):
- Who on your team works with the fractional CTO day to day:
- Escalation path for production incidents:

## 6. Deliverables (what you should receive)

- [ ] Prioritised bottleneck / risk map
- [ ] Architecture decisions with the reasoning, including the option that lost
- [ ] Rollout or migration sequence your team can follow
- [ ] Measurement targets for each change
- [ ] Guardrails: dashboards, alerts, constraints that keep the system healthy

Red flags: recommendations with no priority order, no rollout plan, no measurable target.

## 7. Commercials

- Time commitment (days or hours per month):
- Fee and billing: [fill in]
- Notice period and how either side ends the engagement:
- Who owns the code, documents and reports produced: you

## 8. Review at day 30

- Which outcomes moved?
- What did we learn that changes the plan?
- Continue, change scope, or stop?

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Questions about scoping? Book a free 30-minute technical review: https://cal.com/tanujgarg/30min