What ownership actually means here.
The testing agenda
What gets tested, in what order, and why — held against expected value rather than whoever argued hardest in the last meeting.
Standards for calling results
Pre-registered criteria, stopping rules agreed before launch, and the discipline to hold them when a number looks good early.
Direction of execution
Your internal team or your existing vendor, directed against the agenda. We do not need to be the ones building to be accountable for the program.
Stakeholder translation
Turning experiment results into something your leadership and board can act on, including the losses.
Practice building
Documentation, rituals, and hiring input so the capability survives the engagement ending.
When this is the right shape.
You have hands but no agenda
An internal team or agency that executes competently, with nobody senior deciding what is worth executing. This is the most common and most productive version of the engagement.
A program that stalled
Testing happened, results were ambiguous, trust eroded, and it quietly stopped. Restarting needs someone who can rebuild the standard, not just the calendar.
No execution capacity at all
If nobody can build the tests, strategic ownership has nothing to direct. The experimentation retainer is the right engagement instead.
You want a name on a slide
This is an operating role scoped to strategic hours. If what is needed is advisory credibility rather than program ownership, we are not the right fit and will say so.
About fractional engagements.
How is this different from the retainer?
The retainer is execution — we run the tests. The fractional engagement is ownership — we set the agenda and direct whoever executes, whether that is your internal team or another vendor. Companies with capacity but no strategic owner want the second one.
How much time do we get?
It is scoped to strategic hours rather than execution volume, and agreed explicitly at the start. The commitment is to the program's direction and to being genuinely reachable when a decision is needed, not to a headcount fraction.
Will you direct our existing agency?
Yes, and that is a common shape. It works when the agency executes well but nobody internally is deciding what should be tested or holding results to a standard.
What happens when we hire someone full-time?
That is the intended outcome, and we will help you hire them. An engagement that makes itself unnecessary is the honest version of this offer.
Set the agenda properly.
Tell us what your current program looks like and who executes it today.