Fixing Engineering Chaos After a Series A Raise
How Prodevel could stabilise a fast-growing engineering team that's lost its way
If you've raised a Series A, grown your engineering team quickly, and now have technical debt, deployment problems, and no clear CTO, this is what working with Prodevel could look like.
Is This You?
CEO or COO of a Series A B2B SaaS that has raised £2M–£8M, grown the engineering team from 3 to 12+ people in under a year, and is now experiencing technical and team coordination problems
Questions You\'re Probably Asking
- Q1How do I fix engineering chaos at a Series A startup?
- Q2What does a fractional CTO do at a Series A company?
- Q3How do I prepare for technical due diligence as a startup?
- Q4How do I stop deployment incidents at my startup?
- Q5How do I hire engineers when my codebase is a mess?
The FAQ section at the bottom of this page answers all of these in detail.
The Challenges This Scenario Involves
- CTO left or was never hired — no technical leadership at a critical growth stage
- Engineering team grew faster than the processes to support it
- Multiple incompatible frameworks or architectural approaches in the codebase
- Deployment incidents causing downtime and eroding customer trust
- Investors are starting technical due diligence and the answers aren't ready
- Junior engineers lack the seniority to make architecture decisions independently
How Prodevel Would Approach This
Fast growth without engineering leadership is a common but serious problem at Series A. The danger is that it compounds quickly — bad architecture decisions made now are expensive to undo in 12 months. If you brought this situation to Prodevel, we'd place a Fractional CTO immediately to stabilise the leadership vacuum while working on the structural problems in parallel.
Immediate Stabilisation
Week 1–2- Fractional CTO onboards and assesses the current engineering situation
- Investor technical due diligence pack started immediately — often the highest urgency item
- Engineering rituals established: sprint planning, incident process, architecture reviews
- Codebase and infrastructure audit to identify the highest-risk technical issues
- Stakeholder communication — engineering status updates to board and investors
Delivery Reliability
Week 2–6- CI/CD pipeline implemented — automated testing and deployment replacing manual processes
- Staging environment created that mirrors production
- Deployment frequency increased, deployment risk reduced
- On-call rota and incident response process established
- Monitoring and alerting configured (Datadog, Sentry, or equivalent)
Team Augmentation & Roadmap
Month 2–4- Prodevel senior engineers embed to accelerate roadmap delivery while you hire
- Architecture standards documented — new engineers know what 'good' looks like
- Technical roadmap agreed with the board — what gets fixed, what gets built
- Engineering hiring process designed — role definitions, technical assessments
- Code review culture established to catch problems before they reach production
Permanent CTO Handover
Month 4–6- Fractional CTO leads the permanent CTO search and vetting process
- Full technical documentation and decision log produced for handover
- Architecture overview and known debt briefing for incoming CTO
- Smooth transition with overlap period — no knowledge cliff
- Ongoing advisory relationship available post-handover if useful
What You Could Expect
Stable engineering operations, investor-ready technical documentation, and a clear roadmap — with a permanent CTO hired on your terms.
Services Involved in This Scenario
Fractional CTO
Senior technical leadership from £960/month. Investor due diligence prep, engineering rituals, architecture decisions, and permanent CTO hiring.
Remote Development Teams
Prodevel senior engineers embedded in your team to accelerate roadmap delivery while you build your permanent engineering team.
DevOps & Cloud Solutions
CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, monitoring, and incident response infrastructure — the operational foundations that prevent deployment disasters.
Custom Software Development
Where existing code needs to be stabilised, refactored, or rebuilt to support the next phase of your growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does a Fractional CTO actually do at a Series A startup?
At Series A, the Fractional CTO's most valuable activities are: completing investor technical due diligence documentation, establishing engineering processes (sprint cadence, deployment workflow, incident response), making architecture decisions that the team lacks the seniority to make confidently, and leading the permanent CTO hiring process. They are a senior technical voice in board and investor conversations — which non-technical founders find particularly valuable.
How do I prepare for technical due diligence?
Technical due diligence for a Series A or B typically covers: architecture overview and scalability assessment, code quality and test coverage, security posture and known vulnerabilities, infrastructure costs and efficiency, technical debt inventory and remediation plan, key person risk (is the codebase dependent on one engineer?), and IP ownership clarity. Our Fractional CTO produces this documentation as a standard part of every engagement.
Can Prodevel engineers work as part of our existing team?
Yes. Our Remote Development Teams model embeds Prodevel engineers into your existing team — using your communication tools (Slack, Jira, GitHub), attending your standups, and working within your sprint cycle. They are not a separate outsourced team but a direct extension of your engineering capacity. This typically works better than a fully separate delivery team for Series A companies that need integrated delivery.
How long does it take to fix deployment instability?
Critical deployment stability issues — removing manual deployments, adding a staging environment, and implementing basic CI/CD — can be resolved in 2–4 weeks. Deeper architectural issues that cause intermittent production problems typically take 2–3 months to fully address. The most common quick win is simply separating staging from production and adding automated smoke tests on each deployment.
We have three different backend frameworks — how do we consolidate?
Rarely in one go. We typically recommend running parallel frameworks until one can be decommissioned naturally — as new features are built in the preferred framework and old services are migrated during maintenance windows. A full rewrite is almost never worth the risk at Series A when customer-facing features need to keep shipping. The Fractional CTO produces a framework consolidation roadmap that the team executes incrementally over 6–12 months.
Should we hire a full-time CTO or use a Fractional CTO?
Both, eventually. The Fractional CTO buys you time to hire the right permanent CTO without making a rushed decision under pressure. A bad permanent CTO hire is extremely costly — the wrong person can set engineering back 12–18 months. The Fractional CTO fills the gap immediately, stabilises the team, and then helps you identify and evaluate permanent candidates from a position of strength rather than desperation.
Does This Sound Like Your Situation?
Book a free consultation. We'll listen to your specific context and tell you honestly whether Prodevel is the right fit and what an engagement would look like.