During the product phase, we'll watch for technical and process assumptions. Are you assuming the phone can send a particular type of message or that your app will send things when it isn't active? Are you expecting AI to do something it may or may not be capable of? Is your business model predicated on getting something to the consumer in 30 minutes? If this can't be done, there isn't a reason to continue with the product.

A POC (Proof of Concept) is an ugly, dirty code/app that is never meant for anyone to see but proves your tech assumptions. We'll devise ways of testing your hypotheses... it might be code or a 'simulation.' We'll then direct the tech staff to test these. (Under some circumstances the CPTO may do this by themselves)

Besides a few simple things like a flashlight app or the 'is my table level' app I use, most mobile apps require communicating with servers over the air. These servers need to be configured and managed. Often, apps need a customer-facing desktop component to function.

While we focus on mobile apps, nearly every project requires servers with databases, APIs, and web-based administration tools to configure them and see what your customer is doing. We are adept at designing these end-to-end systems.

Regarding your mobile app, you might have heard that you need to do separate iOS and Android versions. I'm happy to report that two systems, Flutter by Google and React Native by Facebook, do a pretty good job of ‘write once, deploy on both’. We prefer Flutter, but if you prefer React Native, we have you covered, too.

In some cases we could also build apps using some of the popular 'app build' tools.

We'll design your system end-to-end, making detailed decisions like cloud services like AWS and buy/build decisions for various technologies.

Many startups think they should 'build it now to handle a million users'. Our general philosophy is to design it so it CAN be expanded to handle future growth. This translates into designing it so things won't need to be replaced, only added to. This saves time and considerable money to get to your MVP

The output will be an architecture document describing every aspect of your system and how it all fits together.

With the architecture document, the prototype, and product requirements, we would produce a cost estimate using experts in our Rolodex, partner companies, or your internal resources.

Some level of testing should occur on the product before it's shipped. We've seen too many apps get a 1 star because it crashes on many phones. While the features may be fantastic, people don't look past this. We recommend, at a minimum, trying the app on a variety of phones. We also have expert testers in our Rolodex.

Most developers expect two things to be in place before starting: a source code repository such as GitHub and a project management/bug tracking system such as Jira.

We'll set up everything you need to have an Agile process on the day development starts.

Every development team these days, whether internal or external, adheres to Agile methodology, working on immutable 2-week work increments. In this case, the 'product owner' (usually the CPTO) produces task descriptions (traditionally called 'Stories' working from the Prototype and Product Requirements), translating them into tasks that can be done within the two week time-frame. The product owner prioritizes these and, together with the dev team, estimates what can be done.

The development team, called the Scrum team, generally consists of developers, testers, and the UI/UX and graphics people. A daily 15-minute scrum meeting occurs where everyone states their 'blockers'... sometimes they need fancier graphics, sometimes better wording for what appears on the screen. The idea is to clear these blockers as soon as possible. The 'Scrum Master' (again, in a startup, usually the CPTO, or it can be anyone else) runs these meetings and ensures these blockers are dealt with promptly.

We'll also manage people and resources to ensure everything is in place to 'go to market,' including marketing, a well-thought-out 'store presence' with a marketing message backed up by high-quality graphics and videos. Indeed, all these tasks will be 'stories' that the Scrum team executes.

We can serve as the technical team lead for the people developing the product, discussing and solving tech issues, and allocating particular dev talents to specific needs.

While in some rare cases, if it's small, the CPTO can do this development work, it is more often than not that you engage developers at additional cost. We can hook you up with the appropriate developers from our Rolodex or partner companies, or we can manage your current developers.

DevOps consists of lots of skills, usually distinct from development. Here, we'll manage the setup of servers, building the 'source code' that the developer creates on a continual basis (called CI/CD for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment, an integral part of the Agile process), as well as setting up your company's email infrastructure and source code and ticketing system.

Once your app is live, Ops runs it, monitors it constantly, tweaks it, reboots at 3 AM, and more. We manage all this for you.

As with the development team, we can manage your testing team. If you want friends and family to test, we can handle that too, but there should be some structure to testing... you never want to get an egg on your face once you deploy to the stores.

We'll manage putting things up in the Google Play or Apple app stores. There are many rules and regulations, and we'll ensure the app adheres to them so they don't get rejected. We'll set up the stores, taking marketing words, screenshots, videos, etc.

The CPTO leads the project. You'll need to bring in many people at various points, some as full-time people, others as one-off contractors.

As part of the task of estimating, we'll list out everything you need. At that point:

• We can bring in someone from our Rolodex.
• We can connect you to one of our partner-companies.
• You can hire internally, and we'll work on finding and interviewing candidates.

Of course most projects will end up with a mix.

As you grow, you may decide that a Fractional CPTO (CTO or CPO) no longer meets your needs. We will happily help you hire and pass all our work to a permanent person.

When we recommend a 'buy' decision in the build/buy process we'll start techie-to-techie discussions with these partners including due diligence that they can deliver what we want.

As part of this, we'll help negotiate the Tech addendums of any contracts you might enter as part of the business.