Hiring a Fractional Head of Product

Most Common Situations Or Problems That Warrant a Fractional Head of Product

1. Prioritization problems: The roadmap is an unorganized bag of requests, and it is not clear what is actually worth building next.
2. Nobody’s doing discovery: You have opinions, but not enough customer signal to make confident product decisions.
3. Execution problems: Work starts often, finishes late, and scope keeps changing because requirements are not tight.
4. Product adoption problems: You ship features, but usage and retention do not move the way you expected.

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How a Fractional Head of Product Helps Solve Those Problems

1. Product strategy: They define what success looks like, clarify who you are building for, and translate that into a focused product direction.
2. Roadmap ownership: They run an audit-first pass on what exists, identify gaps and opportunities, then build a roadmap tied to outcomes instead of internal requests.
3. Customer + data insight: They map the full user journey, use data to diagnose what is breaking, and create a plan to improve conversion, retention, and “stickiness.”
4. Cross-functional alignment: They keep Sales, Marketing, Engineering, and Leadership aligned on priorities, tradeoffs, and what “done” means for each initiative.
5. Team + delivery system: They build the operating rhythm (planning, reviews, backlog hygiene), unblock delivery, and help the team ship in smaller, predictable increments.

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Fractional Senior PM or a More Senior Fractional Head of Product?

If you already have a clear product direction and you mainly need extra capacity to execute (writing PRDs, running sprints, coordinating releases), a strong Fractional Senior PM can work. If getting high level direction for the team is the gap (what to prioritize, what to cut, how to drive adoption, how to align stakeholders) you want a more senior Fractional Head of Product who can own the roadmap and be accountable for outcomes.

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Case Study

Fractional Head of Product Case Study

Read the Family Promise case study to see what a Fractional Head of Product can own in a lean scope. Jonathan, a Fractional Head of Product, focuses on team build-out, roadmap and budget ownership, vendor selection, and day-to-day guidance on key technology choices, all on just 10 hours per week.

Fractional Jobs also helped:

1. Firesale (consumer marketplace) hire a Fractional Head of Product for 5 hours per week.
2. Flash (fintech) hire a Fractional Head of Product for 10 hours per week.
3. Peppy Health (healthtech) hire a Fractional CPO for 10 hours per week.

All with similar results.

Get help hiring a Fractional Head of Product for your startup or SMB, learn more here.

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