I've been an interim CPO 15 times, more than almost anyone else, and have mentored scores of CPOs over the last 25 years.  Those who have been through more than a few product leadership roles naturally think about what we might be doing instead.  (Hint: something easier and more fun!)

So I've also had loads of conversations with Heads of Product about hanging out their shingles — as interim or part-time or short-term product leaders for rent.  An appealing shift.  And I'm seeing that described more and more as fractional CPOs.

My strongly held belief is that we can be interim CPOs - but that fractional doesn't work for product leaders. 

Words matter, so let me define mine:

• INTERIM means taking on a product leadership role for a short time, usually 3-7 months.  The client company doesn't have the product leader they need: typically they have fired a couple in quick succession; or had the last two resign unexpectedly; or they're unable to agree on what they need in a Head of Product.
• FRACTIONAL means (for me) working half-time or less for a client company, with the possibility of two CPO roles at the same time.

I'm assuming fully fledged companies with products in market, meaningful revenue, and an in-place product management team that needs supervision.  So I'm not including individual contributor jobs wrapped in a VP title; or three-developers-and-a-dog startups wanting general advice; or strategy/consulting gigs without direct day-to-day people management.  

Every one of my 15 interim gigs was 80%-150% of a full-time job, as measured by clock time and stomach acid. There were always complex people issues, frustrated execs, optimistic roadmaps, intractable trade-offs, mishandled customer commitments, and lack of trust in product management.  Messy.  Lots of challenges not identified during the interview process.  (No one needs to hire an expensive outsider when things are going well.)

A Thought Experiment

So you're a half-time CPO, working with this particular client on Mondays, Wednesdays afternoons, and Thursdays.  You've blocked out Tuesdays and Friday for another client or commitment.  What do you do if any of these happen at 4:55pm on Thursday?

• A major enterprise prospect surfaces a last-minute demand for a nonsensical feature.  The sales team immediately escalates to the CEO, who tends to make commitments with little consultation. 
• The Chair of the Board calls the CEO to complain that your AI roadmap isn't aggressive enough.
• Your best product manager gets a job offer from a competitor.
• There's a major outage.  The VP Engineering is away, with disagreement among Engineering teams (and product managers) about what broke or who's going to fix it.
• One of your product managers screws up a demo with a major customer, and Sales wants her fired.  (Alternate wording: Sales screwed up the meeting, but is throwing her under the tram.)
• Support sends you an email about a newly uncovered compliance or legal issue, cc'd to the executive team.

We can't leave any of these to fester over the weekend.  By Monday, narratives will be set, and decisions will be made.  So CEOs will call at all hours, regardless of half-time niceties — or will proceed without you because they don’t think you are committed enough to the business. 

Leadership means showing up when we’re needed.  I experimented with half-time contracts early on, but realized that I just couldn't let the disasters happen.  So I ended up giving away the other half of my time.   

REPLACING OURSELVES

My biggest learning: hiring my permanent replacement turned out to be my most important task.  My clients didn’t think about this, and it wasn’t in the job spec, but…

Companies are best served by permanent, full-time CPOs who own long-term product decisions and organizational structures and economic viability and cross-functional collaboration.  Who are truly invested in the long-term success of the corporation, not just the product team.  Who make an ongoing emotional commitment to the employees and products and customers.  

Thinking about timeframes helps me sort decisions into "postpone for the incoming CPO" and "urgent enough for immediate action."  
Some that I try to delay and hand off:

• Repricing and repackaging.  Complex, politically fraught, slow-moving, and heavy on execution/implementation.
• Re-imagining the engineering/product/design cycle.  Lots of opinions and cats to herd.
• Deciding to re-architect the core product.  Nine month projects that usually take three years.

In the “don’t wait” stack:

• Identify folks on the product team who are a bad fit for the role, and would rather be doing something else in the company.  (After all, 95% of employees are not product managers.)  Where would it be in the best interest of the company and the people involved, e.g. swapping the deal-focused product manager whose heart is really in Sales for a strategic sales engineer who’s been lobbying to join the product team?
• Approve small, obvious items.  Sign for the inexpensive automation tool folks are begging for.  Tell teams they can pick their own meeting times.  Ask Support and Product if they want to jointly prioritize tickets.  Unblock something.  Demonstrate that leaders work for the doers and the makers.
• Spot straggler products that no customers use, and sunsetting them.  Free up people and attention for things that matter.

Restructuring engineering/product/design teams can go either way.  If there’s chaos and deep frustration and lack of team-level ownership, then this might need immediate action.  But crafting sensible, mission-focused whole teams takes thought and consultation and organizational sensitivity.  I prefer to leave that for the next incumbent.

So I explicitly include in my interim CPO proposals the responsibility to replace myself.  (My presence suggests that the company’s previous approaches didn’t work.)  I write the job description, choose the search firm, do resume review and first candidate meetings myself, then recommend 2-3 possibles who I thought could succeed.  I try to work myself out of the gig as quickly as possible, and bring in someone who is ready to take the baton.

Sound Byte

Interim CPO roles are more than full-time — and heavily weighted toward C-level organizational/emotional issues.  It's not easy to fit them into neat 20-hour schedules.  And actively planning a quick succession serves the client company best.