Building the right thing is harder than building the thing right.
I deliver effective fractional product management for businesses to identify the right problems to solve before committing time and money to building solutions that might not work.
The team is busy or not there yet. The right problems aren’t getting solved.
Most product decisions get made without enough evidence. Problems get defined by whoever has the most influence in the room, solutions get committed to before the problem is properly understood and the team ends up building things that don’t move the business forward. The backlog fills up. The roadmap shifts. Nothing quite lands the way it should.
No discovery process
The business goes straight from idea to build. Nobody has validated whether the problem is real, whether customers actually experience it or whether the proposed solution is the right way to address it.
Decisions made on gut feel
There’s plenty of opinion about what to build next but not much evidence. Priorities get set in meetings based on who argued hardest, not what the data or the customer is saying.
Building without learning
The team ships but doesn’t know if what they shipped worked. There’s no feedback loop connecting what gets built to whether it solved the problem it was designed to solve.
What you need is product management that can bring rigour to the questions your business needs to answer before the build starts.
Here’s what I do as a Fractional Product Manager
Discovery
Good product decisions start with understanding the problem properly. I run discovery across qualitative and quantitative sources (customer interviews, usability research, behavioural analytics and SQL-based data analysis) to build a clear picture of what’s actually happening before anyone commits to a solution.
- Customer interviews and usability research
- Behavioural analysis across your analytics toolset
- SQL-based analysis of product and customer data
- Synthesis of existing research, data and stakeholder knowledge
Problem identification
Not all problems are worth solving. I work with the business to identify which problems will actually move the needle, understanding what the business is optimising for, whether that’s conversion, retention or profitability and making sure product decisions serve the right goal rather than the loudest voice in the room.
- Strategic framing of problems against business outcomes
- Balancing the needs of multiple audiences and stakeholders
- Prioritisation based on evidence, not opinion
Validation
Before committing to a full build, I validate whether the proposed solution is the right answer to the right problem. That means using experimentation, research and data to test assumptions early, when changing course is cheap, rather than after the product ships.
- Experiment design and delivery to validate product hypotheses
- Qualitative validation through research and usability testing
- Data-led assessment of whether a solution is working as intended
What this isn’t
I’m not a backlog manager or a delivery lead. If you need someone to own your sprint ceremonies, write your tickets and manage your development team’s day to day, that’s a different role and a different person.
What I do as a fractional product manager is the work that should happen before the backlog fills up. If you need someone to help your team understand what to build and why, that’s the conversation worth having. If you need someone to manage the build once that’s decided, I’m not the right fit.
“Storm’s experience and background makes her a very useful person to have running your project.”
– Timothy Greig, DT Digital / SafetyCulture
Why this works as a fractional product management engagement
A full-time senior product manager focused on discovery and validation would cost $160,000-$200,000 a year. For most businesses that’s a hard commitment to justify before you’ve proven the model works.
A fractional product management engagement gives you the same depth of thinking applied to the specific problems your business needs to solve right now. When the discovery is done and the validation is complete, the engagement ends. Your team has clarity on what to build and why. You haven’t committed to a permanent headcount to get there.
The other advantage is perspective. Someone embedded full-time in your business stops seeing the problems clearly over time. A fractional practitioner brings fresh eyes to every engagement and isn’t carrying the politics of what got built before.
Work with Storm
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What an fractional product management engagement looks like
| Week 1 | Brief – I review what the business already knows. Existing research, analytics, customer feedback, previous product decisions. I identify the gaps and agree the scope of the discovery work needed. |
| Weeks 2–3 | Research – Customer interviews, behavioural analysis and SQL-based data analysis to build a clear picture of the problem space. Qual and quant working together, not separately. |
| Week 4 | Problem framing – I synthesise findings into a clear problem statement. What the business should be solving for, why it matters and what success looks like. Presented back to you and your team for alignment. |
| Weeks 5–6 | Validation – I design and run validation activities against the proposed solution. That might be an experiment, a research session or a data analysis depending on what the question demands. |
| Week 7 | Recommendations – A prioritised set of recommendations covering what to build, why and in what order. Your team has the evidence and the framing to make confident product decisions. Optional retainer for ongoing discovery and validation support. |
| Month 1 | Foundation – I embed with the team and get across the business. Customer research, data analysis and stakeholder conversations to understand what’s working, what isn’t and what the product function needs to deliver. Discovery and problem framing completed. Initial roadmap and product process established. |
| Months 2–3 | Build the practice – Ongoing discovery and validation work alongside hands-on delivery. User stories, PRDs and tickets written where needed. Product management process embedded into how the team operates day to day. 2–3 days per week. |
| Months 4–6 | Sustain and reassess – Continued delivery against the roadmap with regular reassessment of priorities as the business learns. Focus shifts progressively to building the team’s capability to own the product management function independently. |
| End of engagement | Handover – Product process, documentation and roadmap handed over cleanly. Optional support for hiring the permanent product lead. |
Who this is for
If you’re looking at the discovery and recommendations engagement: You have a product management team but they’re focused on delivery. You have a specific problem to solve, a new feature, a conversion issue, a retention question, and you need someone with the depth to do the discovery and validation work properly rather than fitting it around everything else on the team’s plate.
If you’re looking at the fractional embedding: You don’t have a product management function yet. The founder or a senior leader is making product decisions and it’s becoming a bottleneck. You need someone to come in, build the practice and own it while you figure out whether and when to hire permanently.
FAQ
Common questions
The easiest way is to book a call using the link on this page. Tell me what you’re trying to figure out and I’ll tell you straight whether I can help. If it’s a fit, I’ll turn around a plain-language scope within a few days.
The discovery and recommendations engagement is for businesses that have a specific product problem to solve and need an expert product manager to do the research and validation work properly. It has a clear output at the end. The fractional embedding is for businesses that don’t have a product management function yet and need someone to build that layer and embed it into how the team operates, until they’re ready to hire permanently.
Flexibly. I can work remotely or on-site at your office on agreed days – up to two days a week depending on the engagement. We agree the arrangement upfront and it can flex as the work develops.
I work on a day rate or fixed project price depending on the scope. Payment terms are 14 days.
Most specialists go deep in one area. I work across the intersection of user experience, technology and business strategy. That means I can understand the full shape of a problem and connect the pieces rather than just solving my corner of it. In a world where AI can do a lot of jobs, the person who can bring multiple parts of the problem together is more useful than someone who only knows one piece of the puzzle.
A full-time PM is the right call once the business has enough product work to justify the role permanently. A fractional engagement is the right call when you need senior discovery and validation capability now but aren’t ready to commit to a full-time hire. You get the expertise without the salary, benefits and long-term commitment. When the time is right to hire permanently, the groundwork is already in place.
In the fractional embedding, yes — I work with your development team on user stories, PRDs and tickets as part of the ongoing delivery rhythm. In the discovery and recommendations engagement, my focus is upstream of the development team. I’m defining what should be built and why, not managing the build itself.
I’ve worked across product, analytics and experimentation for over a decade across multiple industries. My specific focus is discovery and validation – using qualitative research, behavioural analysis and SQL-based data analysis to help businesses understand what to build before they commit to building it. That combination of product thinking and analytical depth is what makes the work useful.
Twelve years across agencies and in-house roles, covering customer behaviour, retention, conversion and lifetime value. I work across GA4, Amplitude, Adobe Analytics, Snowflake, SQL Server and more. The analytical layer is what separates good product discovery from gut feel.
Everything shared with me is treated as confidential. Standard confidentiality terms are part of every engagement and I can work within your organisation’s existing NDA or data handling policies if required. I never share client data and your data is never used to train AI models.
Yes. For engagements where on-site presence adds value I can work from your office on agreed days, up to two days a week. Location and schedule are agreed as part of the scope.
For the discovery and recommendations engagement, you receive a documented set of findings and recommendations your team can act on. For the fractional embedding, the product process, documentation and roadmap are handed over cleanly and I can support the hiring of a permanent product lead if needed.
Usually within one week of an agreed engagement. Get in touch early if you have something coming up and I’ll let you know availability.
I use AI to support customer research, synthesise findings and generate analytical artefacts. Your data is never shared in a way that trains models. If your organisation works with sensitive data I can work without AI entirely or in line with your existing company policies.
About
Meet Storm Jarvie
I genuinely believe the best decisions start with admitting what you don’t know yet. Not as a methodology. Just as a way of working. It keeps the work honest and it tends to produce better outcomes than starting with the answer and working backwards. That’s the thread running through everything I do.
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