Practical guidance on fractional technology leadership, AI governance, technology due diligence and security, from the ScaleAround team.
Wales has a real technology sector now, and a leadership gap to match. The Welsh Government's March 2026 study puts the sector at around £8.5bn a year and 45,000 jobs, with the number of tech businesses up 20% over five years. Barclays reported Wales as the fastest-growing UK reg
You can get a useful read on the health of your business technology in an afternoon, without being technical, by asking 12 questions and being honest about the answers. It will not replace a proper review, and it will tell you whether you need one. Score each question yes, partly
The difference is time and intensity. An interim CTO is full-time, for a fixed period, to cover a gap or lead through a specific crisis or change. A fractional CTO is part-time, usually one or two days a week, for as long as you need senior technology leadership without a full-ti
Fractional means you buy senior technology leadership by the day, not by the salary. You get a CTO or CIO for one or two days a week, on a rolling retainer, with the seniority of someone who has done the job rather than only advised on it. What follows is how the engagement actua
Most owners I speak to carry the same worry, usually quietly. If AI can do the work, what happens to my people, and what happens to me. Here is the honest answer for a small or mid-sized firm. AI is far more likely to change what your team does each day than to empty your office.
Old is not the same as broken. Plenty of businesses run on systems that are 15 years old and perfectly sound, and plenty have spent a fortune replacing something that only needed leaving alone. The decision to modernise should rest on four things. Whether the system still does th
A good fractional CTO contract is short, clear and fair to both sides. It says what you are buying, how much time, what it costs, who owns what, and how either side ends it. If a proposed agreement runs to 30 pages or leaves any of those vague, be wary. Here is what should be in
Most development spend is lost to waste, not to engineering. Work that was never needed, work done twice, work waiting on a decision, work that shipped and broke. Cut the waste and you cut the cost while quality goes up, because the same people spend their time on things that mat
If you run a business that depends on technology and you cannot personally judge whether the technology is any good, you are carrying a risk you cannot see. A fractional CTO closes that gap. You get a senior technologist who answers to you, speaks plain English, and takes the dec
Technical due diligence answers one question. Will this technology support the business the investor is being asked to fund, and what will it cost to get there. The checklist below is the one I use, whether I am running diligence for an investor or preparing a founder to face it.
Private equity firms review the technology of their portfolio companies for three reasons. To protect the value they have already bought, to find the value they have not yet unlocked, and to make sure nothing technical derails the exit. We recently worked with a private equity in
A fractional CTO does not replace your developers or your agency. They lead them. The relationship works when the CTO sets direction and standards, the team or agency does the building, and the founder stops being the go-between. Done well, the people already doing the work get b
