Engagements
What the work costs, and how it is scoped.
Most advisory pricing pages publish a rate card that nobody honours or a range so wide it tells you nothing. This one publishes the single number that can be quoted before the problem has been seen, and is specific about how everything after it gets scoped.
ProductExec works with CEOs and product leaders who have more AI initiatives than owners.
The largest shape this takes is the seat itself: Kevin held the Chief Product Officer seat at GWI, a global consumer research data platform, as a ProductExec engagement from August 2025 to March 2026.
Three shapes
Fixed scope, retainer, or a day.
Every engagement is one of three shapes. The shape is chosen by what you actually need — an outcome, a seat, or a room — not by what is easiest to invoice.
Fixed-scope engagement
Two to twelve weeks, one named outcome
The default. A diagnostic sprint, an operating model reset, a roadmap rebuild, an AI governance design. Scope, artifacts, and the decision the work exists to unblock are written down before it starts. The price is fixed, quoted once, and does not move when the work takes longer than expected.
Right when
You know what is broken and you want it fixed without adding a headcount line.
Pricing
Scoped after the working session. Quoted as a single number, not a rate card.
Fractional leadership retainer
Three to twelve months, a set number of days per month
Kevin holds the CPO seat: he runs the operating cadence, makes calls, sits in the exec meeting, and owns the product org’s outcomes for the term. This is a standing commitment with a named day allocation per month, not an on-call arrangement. It ends on a date you both agree at the start, usually because a permanent hire has landed.
Right when
You have a product organization and no one senior enough to run it, or a permanent search that will take two quarters.
Pricing
A monthly retainer set by the day allocation. Quoted after the working session, with a thirty-day notice term on both sides.
Advisory day rate
Single days, or a block drawn down over a quarter
Board sessions, an exec offsite, a build-versus-buy standoff, a week of interviews for a VP Product hire. Discrete senior time, no operating commitment. The least efficient way to buy the work and occasionally the only one that fits.
Right when
You need judgment in a room on a specific date and nothing after it.
Pricing
A day rate, quoted on request. Blocks of five or more days are priced lower per day.
How scoping works
Nothing is quoted before it is understood.
Three steps, in order. The first one is the only one with a published price, and it is deliberately small enough to be a low-consequence decision.
The working session
Ninety minutes on the one decision blocking the others, for $1,500. You send context beforehand. You get a written point of view within 48 hours. This is the only number quoted before anyone has seen the problem, because it is the only thing that can be priced without seeing it.
The scope
If there is work worth doing, it gets written down: the outcome, the artifacts, the duration, the people involved, the price. One page. You approve it or you do not, and the working session fee comes off the total either way.
The engagement
Weekly working sessions with a fixed agenda, artifacts committed as they are produced, and a standing checkpoint with whoever holds the budget. Scope changes are re-quoted, not absorbed silently.
Two things follow from scoping in this order. Engagements are priced against an outcome rather than a calendar, so an engagement that finishes early finishes early and is not stretched to fill the term. And the person quoting the work is the person doing it, which removes the usual gap between what was sold and what arrives.
Included
What every engagement carries.
- Kevin does the work. There is no team, no associate, and no one you have not met.
- Written artifacts you keep and use: the decision memo, the operating cadence, the bet definitions, the governance model.
- Direct access between sessions, within reason, by email and Slack.
- A named end date and an explicit definition of what has to be true for the work to be finished.
- A handover: whoever owns this after the engagement gets briefed properly.
Not included
What this is not.
- Delivery capacity. Kevin will not write your specs, groom your backlog, or act as a contract PM.
- Vendor selection as a service. Opinions on tooling are free; a procurement process is not what this is.
- Staff augmentation or recruiting on commission. Interview support is included in a retainer; placement fees are not charged.
- Decks for circulation. The artifacts are working documents, not a board narrative someone else will present.
- Implementation engineering. When the work needs building, it gets scoped separately and Kevin will say so.
Durations
How long each of these actually takes.
Durations are published on each service page so the decision can be sized before anyone speaks. A diagnostic sprint runs two to four weeks and produces a prioritised map rather than a plan of record. A full AI product strategy engagement runs eight to twelve weeks, because the second half is where bets get shaped and the operating cadence gets tested against real work. Fractional leadership runs three to twelve months, set by the horizon of whatever it is bridging — a permanent search, a funding round, a transformation with a board date on it.
The pattern under those ranges is that the useful unit of advisory work is a decision, not a quarter. An engagement is long enough to make the decisions that were blocked and to see the first ones survive contact with delivery. It is not long enough to become part of the furniture. If an engagement is being extended a second time, that is usually evidence a role needs filling rather than evidence the advisory work is succeeding, and that is what will be said.
Diagnostic sprint
2–4 weeks
Strategy or operating model
8–12 weeks
Fractional leadership
3–12 months
Proof
What changed, and what stayed in place.
Context
European automotive retail SaaS, four product tribes, dealer and OEM customers.
Situation
AI, machine learning, and conversational AI work was running across product lines without a shared thesis or a single owner.
Intervention
Consolidated the AI work behind a smaller set of product bets and named an owner for each.
Outcome
A single AI thesis with a named owner behind each bet, and a shorter list of committed initiatives.
Context
Scheduling software company repositioning from consumer utility to product-led B2B.
Situation
Product, design, product marketing, and support were aligned to the old consumer motion.
Intervention
Reset the roadmap around the B2B thesis and rebuilt the partner and integration strategy behind it.
Outcome
A roadmap, a partner strategy, and a go-to-market motion all pointed at the B2B buyer rather than the consumer one.
Context
Healthcare workflow company moving from tech-enabled services to enterprise B2B SaaS.
Situation
Core platforms and the partner network needed relaunching while delivery continued.
Intervention
Installed the operating cadence, decision rights, and coaching that let the team run discovery and delivery in parallel.
Outcome
Discovery and delivery running in parallel under one cadence, with decision rights held by the team rather than escalated.
Questions
The things people ask before they ask for a number.
- Why is only one price published?
- Because only one price is honest before the problem has been seen. $1,500 buys a ninety-minute working session and a written point of view, and it is the same for everyone. Everything after that depends on the number of teams, the state of the operating model, and how much of the work is decision-making versus repair. A published band for that would be a guess dressed as a quote.
- Is the working session fee credited?
- Yes, in full, against any engagement that starts within ninety days of the session. If nothing follows, you still keep the written point of view.
- How are engagements priced — by hours or by scope?
- By scope, with one exception. Fixed-scope engagements are quoted as a single number tied to a named outcome. Fractional retainers are priced on a monthly day allocation, which is the closest thing here to buying time, and exists because holding a seat is a commitment rather than a deliverable. Advisory days are a day rate. No engagement is billed against timesheets.
- How long does a typical engagement run?
- A diagnostic sprint runs two to four weeks. A full AI product strategy or operating model engagement runs eight to twelve weeks. Fractional leadership runs three to twelve months. Anything proposed as longer than twelve months should be a permanent hire, and will be described that way.
- What happens if the scope changes mid-engagement?
- It gets re-quoted in writing before the work changes. Silently absorbing scope is how advisory relationships turn into resentment on one side and dependence on the other.
- Can an engagement convert to a permanent role?
- No. Fractional leadership exists to make a permanent hire successful, not to audition for it. Kevin will help write the role, screen for it, and hand over to whoever lands it.
- When is this the wrong thing to buy?
- When you need execution capacity rather than judgment, when the CEO is the real product owner and will not delegate, when the constraint is engineering throughput, or when you already know you need a permanent CPO and are using advisory work to defer the search. In all four cases the working session will say so, and it is the cheapest way to find out.
More on how the practice works is on the FAQ.
The first step
Ninety minutes on the decision you are actually stuck on.
Most advisory relationships start with a discovery call that discovers nothing. This one starts with work. Send the context beforehand — the roadmap, the org chart, the three AI initiatives nobody owns. We spend ninety minutes on the single decision blocking the others. You leave with a written point of view: what you should stop, what you should own, and what the next ninety days look like.
Format
90 minutes, one decision
Deliverable
Written point of view within 48 hours
Price
$1,500, credited against any engagement
Not a fit if you want a vendor evaluation, a staffing plan, or a deck to circulate. If ninety minutes shows this is not a fit, Kevin will say so and point you somewhere better.