SOFTWARE PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Software product development, Sprint 0 to shipped product.

Ship the product your roadmap commits to, AI-native or conventional. Sprint 0 lands a scope you can defend in two to four weeks. The build runs with a lean senior team in weekly sprints, billed against acceptance criteria rather than clocked time.

Get in touch See how Sprint 0 runs

Trusted by great companies.

  • Notary.io
  • ElephantCPA
  • Docbraces
  • Groundlight
  • Plannerd
  • GloFlow
  • Asana Rebel

WHAT YOU WALK OUT WITH

A software product development company that ships product, not staff hours.

You walk out with a production-grade product against a scope you can defend. Sprint 0 turns your thesis into engineering scope you can build against. The build runs that scope to shipped software, with billing tied to acceptance instead of clocked time.

  • A scope you can defend, before code starts

    Two to four calendar weeks of senior engineering and product time, working alongside your team. You walk out with the overarching UI/UX design and design system, epics and user stories with acceptance criteria, a billable milestone plan with every milestone defined and priced, and the technical architecture delivered as a scaffolded repository. If you take the deliverable elsewhere, it still holds value: another vendor or your in-house team can execute against it directly.

  • A lean team scoped to the work

    Two to four people on the engagement: full-time engineers paired with the fractional roles your build actually needs (delivery manager, product manager, QA, designer). Lean by design, set in Sprint 0 against the work rather than against a target head count. Adding people above what the scope warrants slows shipping and adds coordination cost on your side.

  • A build you can model runway against

    Weekly sprints with end-of-sprint demos. Milestones map to the epics from Sprint 0, with at least two milestones a month. Billing fires on milestone acceptance, not on clocked time. Scope changes become new milestones with their own acceptance criteria and billing, not absorbed into existing ones. The schedule and the billing are the same artifact, so you can model runway against either.

WHAT WE BUILD

Software product development services, from first release to the version after it.

Most engagements cover the whole product: the discovery and design that set the scope, the build, the release, and the work that keeps it shipping afterwards. AI is part of the same team and the same milestones, whether the product is built around a model or needs one feature that uses it.

  • Product discovery and scoping

    Sprint 0 turns a thesis or a PRD into engineering scope: user stories with acceptance criteria, a priced milestone plan, and a scaffolded repository you keep either way.

  • UI/UX design and prototyping

    A designer works fractionally alongside the engineers, so the design system and the codebase grow together instead of one being retrofitted to the other.

  • MVP development

    The smallest release that proves the thesis in production, built on the architecture the full product will keep. Founders shipping a first version usually start here.

  • Full-cycle engineering

    Backend, frontend, mobile, data, and infrastructure in weekly sprints, with QA inside every sprint and a release process that runs from the first milestone.

  • Modernization and maintenance

    Replacing a legacy stack in slices while the current product keeps running, or taking over an existing codebase and shipping the roadmap it was waiting on.

AI software development services, inside the same engagement.

Custom AI development and generative AI development run on the same team and the same milestone plan as the rest of the product. There is no separate AI practice and no specialist upcharge. What we build most often:

  • LLM applications and retrieval (RAG)

    Products built around a language model, with retrieval over your own data, evaluation harnesses, and cost controls, so answers can be trusted and paid for.

  • AI agents and copilots

    Multi-step agents and in-product assistants that read and write to real systems, with guardrails and human approval where the action is irreversible.

  • Document and image understanding

    Extraction, classification, and grading over documents and images, from forms and submissions to clinical photos.

  • Predictive analytics and scoring

    Forecasting, scoring, and anomaly detection wired into the workflow where the decision is made, not into a dashboard nobody opens.

  • Model selection, fine-tuning, and evaluation

    Choosing between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and open models per use case, fine-tuning when the data justifies it, and evals that run in CI.

STACK WE SHIP IN

TypeScript and Python on the server (Node.js, Next.js, Django, FastAPI). React and React Native on the client. PostgreSQL and Supabase for data. AWS, GCP, and Azure for infrastructure, with Docker and GitHub Actions for delivery. Model providers are chosen per use case (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google), orchestrated with LangGraph where an agent needs it.

HOW IT WORKS

From discovery call to shipped product, in four steps.

The engagement starts with a 30-minute discovery call. A senior engineer walks through what you are building, where you are in the build, and what the next two quarters need to look like. The call ends with a Sprint 0 proposal when the fit holds.

When Sprint 0 lands at the end of two to four weeks, both sides sit down for a go or no-go decision. Either side can decline the full build, and the deliverable is intact on either side. When the answer is go, the build engagement runs against the scope and milestones set in Sprint 0. Weekly sprints, weekly demos, billed against acceptance criteria.

WHAT KEEPS THE BUILD ECONOMICS HONEST

Four mechanics that hold the build from Sprint 0 to launch.

Small-team product builds tend to fail at four predictable points: discovery produces a deck instead of engineering scope, the team scales up under scope-creep until economics break, billing decouples from delivery and your runway erodes invisibly, or the AI angle is bolted on after the codebase is already shaped wrong. The four mechanics below are what hold each of those failure points in check.

  • Sprint 0 produces engineering scope, not a deck

    Two to four weeks of working engineering and product time produces four concrete deliverables: the overarching UI/UX design and design system, epics and user stories with acceptance criteria, a billable milestone plan with every milestone defined and priced, and the technical architecture delivered as a scaffolded repository with the foundations wired together. If you walk at Sprint 0 close, those artifacts go with you and another team can build against them.

  • Lean team scoped to the work, never inflated to absorb scope creep

    Two to four people on the engagement: full-time engineers paired with the fractional roles your build actually needs (delivery manager, product manager, QA, designer). Composition is set in Sprint 0 against the work, not against a target head count. When scope genuinely grows, the answer is a new milestone with its own acceptance criteria and its own billing, not more people added to an existing milestone you already priced.

  • Milestone billing tied to acceptance, not to clocked time

    Every milestone has acceptance criteria that were written in Sprint 0 and a billing amount tied to that milestone. Billing fires on your sign-off, not on hours logged. You can model runway against the milestone schedule because the schedule and the billing are the same thing. Scope changes are negotiated as new milestones, not absorbed into existing milestones at the same price.

  • AI fluency in every engineer, by default

    Every engineer placed on the build is fluent in modern AI tooling, LLM APIs, and the agent patterns shipping in production today. AI fluency is the baseline, not an upcharge and not a separate team. Whether your product needs AI on screen or just an engineering team that uses AI tooling in the build loop, you get the same bar.

PRICING

MVP development to mature product builds, priced against scope.

Pricing runs in two steps. Sprint 0 is a fixed fee set on the discovery call. The build is sized when Sprint 0 closes, against the scope and team composition you and Leanware land on, not by the hour. Each proposal is its own configuration of the variables below.

SPRINT 0

Scoping with engineering, two to four weeks

Fixed fee

Set on the discovery call

Senior engineer plus senior delivery manager, with a designer engaged fractionally. The fee scales with complexity (number of stakeholders, scope of the discovery, integration points to inventory, depth of the design-system work). The deliverable retains value whether you continue with the build or take it elsewhere.

  • Overarching UI/UX design and the design system the build extends
  • Epics and user stories with acceptance criteria, ordered into a build roadmap
  • Billable milestone plan: every milestone defined, priced, and scheduled
  • Technical architecture with repository scaffolding and infrastructure groundwork

BUILD ENGAGEMENT

Milestone-billed product build

Sized to your scope

Set when Sprint 0 closes

The full build runs against the scope and milestone plan from Sprint 0. The number reflects the complexity Sprint 0 surfaced: deeper scope, more integration points, or a larger team composition land at the higher end. No setup fee on top of Sprint 0, no hourly markup, no separate "AI specialist" charge.

  • Two to four people: full-time engineers plus fractional roles as scoped
  • Delivery manager, product manager, QA, designer as the work warrants
  • Weekly sprints with end-of-sprint demos
  • At least two milestones per month, mapped to Sprint 0 epics
  • Billing fires on milestone acceptance, not on clocked time
  • Scope changes are new milestones, not absorbed into existing ones

WHAT A BUILD PROPOSAL CARRIES

The variables on every build engagement.

Each proposal commits to a precise configuration along the axes below, set in Sprint 0.

Sprint 0 fee and timeline
Fixed fee, two to four calendar weeks. Set at signing based on complexity.
Build team composition
Two to four people on the engagement: full-time engineers paired with fractional delivery, product, QA, and design as the work warrants.
Milestone count and schedule
At least two milestones per month, mapped to Sprint 0 epics. Total count set against scope.
Per-milestone billing
Each milestone has acceptance criteria from Sprint 0 and a billing amount tied to that milestone.
Total build engagement cost
Sum of milestone billings, set in the Sprint 0 economics summary before the build kicks off.
Sprint cadence and demo schedule
Weekly sprints. End-of-sprint demos with your team. Acceptance sign-off triggers the next milestone billing.
ENGAGEMENT MODEL

How the engagement model works

This line runs end to end on our milestone-based engagement model: the pricing above is the model in action. Sprint 0 sets the fixed scope and the fixed fee, the build bills per accepted milestone rather than per hour, and you can exit at any milestone and keep everything delivered.

  1. 01

    Sprint 0

    Fixed fee ($5,000 to $15,000), fixed scope, 2 to 4 weeks. Produces the scope and the milestone plan.

  2. 02

    Milestone plan and go/no-go

    Every milestone has acceptance criteria and a billing amount, set before the build starts. The go-or-no-go decision happens here: after Sprint 0 ends, before Sprint 1 starts.

  3. 03

    Pay per accepted milestone

    Billing fires on your sign-off, not on hours logged.

  4. 04

    Exit at any milestone

    Stop at any milestone boundary. Everything delivered so far is yours, including the code.

The full model, including the exit terms and an example milestone schedule, is on the engagement models page. The entry point is Sprint 0, a fixed-fee product discovery sprint ($5,000 to $15,000, 2 to 4 weeks).

IS THIS YOU

Who this engagement typically works for.

If one of these describes your quarter, the engagement is sized for you. Runway and stage are part of the conversation on the discovery call, not a filter we apply before it.

  • Technical founder shipping the first production version

    You have validated a thesis and you are ready to ship the first production-grade version. You can prototype yourself, but the architecture, the AI orchestration, and the design system need to land right from day one so the next year of building runs against them cleanly. Sprint 0 closes the scope. The build ships the product. You stay close to the technical decisions; the team carries the execution.

  • Non-technical founder with a co-founder gap

    You have a product-market thesis but the CTO search is still running. You want a team that can ship the next major version while the search goes, and hand the codebase to the eventual CTO cleanly. The senior delivery manager in the engagement is your single point of contact, doing the work a technical co-founder would otherwise be doing.

  • Company building a product, AI-native or conventional, for internal or external use

    A company commissioning a new product, either an internal tool that re-shapes a workflow your team runs every day or an external-facing feature in your customer offering. Engineering is not your core function, the product is a defined deliverable rather than a permanent practice, and you want a team that ships it and hands it back to you to operate.

  • PM with a finished PRD and a scoped deliverable

    You have a finished PRD and exec air cover to engage an external partner. The acceptance criteria are already written; what you need is a team that converts your PRD into engineering scope and ships against the milestones, without needing PM hand-holding on every decision. Sprint 0 closes around your PRD, not a blank thesis.

HOW THIS IS DIFFERENT

Not staff augmentation. Not enterprise consulting. Not a self-serve AI build tool.

Four alternatives cover most of the market for product builds. Each wins on a specific shape of need. Software Product Development is built for teams who want a fixed-scope engagement with engineering credibility and AI fluency at boutique scale, priced against milestones you can verify rather than against hourly time.

Comparison Software Product Development Staff-aug marketplaces Larger product studios Offshore project shops Self-serve AI build tools
Engagement structure Sprint 0 scoping plus a milestone-billed build. One fixed-scope engagement. Per-engineer hourly placement. You own the deliverable. Sales-led discovery, then a multi-team build proposal. Fixed-price build off a brief, no working discovery. You drive the tool. No team, no engagement.
Scope before the build Two to four weeks of working engineering and product time, four concrete deliverables. You write the scope. The marketplace places engineers against it. A discovery deck and a SOW, typically one to two weeks. A brief from you, then a fixed-price quote. Often missing acceptance criteria. You scope it yourself in the tool as you go.
Team shape Two to four people: full-time engineers paired with the fractional roles the build actually needs. Lean by design. One engineer at a time. You assemble the team. Five to fifteen across multiple practice areas. Partner ladder. Variable. Often shared across clients. You are the team.
AI fluency Baseline for every engineer. AI tooling in the build loop comes standard. Per-individual. You filter for it. Practice-level, often priced as a premium specialism. Variable. Often retrofit onto a non-AI process. AI is the tool itself, not the engineering around it.
Pricing shape Sprint 0 fixed fee, build milestone-billed against acceptance. Hourly markup per engineer. Time-and-materials or fixed bid, priced for $200M+ enterprise budgets. Hourly or fixed-price. Cost-led positioning. Per-seat subscription. Production-grade work is your problem.
Best fit Startups shipping a new product, or companies commissioning a defined product, AI-native or conventional, for internal or external use, where milestone-billed economics fit the budget shape. Teams who want point-and-shoot capacity and will own the build management. Multi-team initiatives at enterprise budgets. Cost-led builds where price beats engineering quality. Founders prototyping solo before the codebase needs production-grade architecture.
Where it loses Teams wanting hourly billing. Multi-month enterprise procurement. Engagements that need point-and-shoot staffing rather than a fixed-scope build. Sustained team stability. Partnership layer. Lean-team scope sizes that do not fit enterprise budgets. Engineering quality. Codebase extensibility after the agency exits. Production-grade architecture. Integration with existing systems. Codebases that real engineering teams will extend.

Two things make this engagement different in kind. Sprint 0 is real engineering work, so the scope the build runs against is the kind of artifact another team could build against if you walked. And milestone billing is tied to acceptance criteria set in Sprint 0, not to hours logged, so the schedule and the billing are the same thing. Both pieces hold the build economics where most small-team builds fail.

SELECTED WORK

Product builds shipped under the milestone-billed structure.

Software Product Development ships product against a milestone plan set in Sprint 0. The cases below are the published anchors today. As more closed engagements clear the case-study template, the strongest of them will land in this section and the placeholders will retire.

Concept to launch in approximately four months across iOS and Android

GloFlow

AI fitness app development from concept to launch in about four months: a team of four took GloFlow to iOS and Android with conversational AI, food-photo recognition, and a health safety layer.

Software Product Development Read case study

Docbraces

A custom web app replaced Docbraces' error prone spreadsheet for building orthodontic treatment contracts, adding payment options and digital signatures across a network of clinics in Canada and the US, targeting up to 80% less time on contract-related procedures.

Software Product Development Read case study
Event-driven serverless trading platform in production, executing rules-based strategies

2Moon Capital LLC

Custom trading platform development for 2Moon Capital: an event-driven, rules-based system that runs the firm's strategies through Interactive Brokers, validated in paper-trading environments first.

Software Product Development Read case study
View all case studies

CLIENT VOICE

From the founders who ran Sprint 0 and shipped the build.

Custom Software Dev for Business Development Platform

Overall, their project management is good. I'm very happy with my lead engineer.

PC

Paul Chiappetta

CTO, Reachr

Florida, United States Clutch verified

UI/UX Design & Mobile App Development for Fitness Company

They were responsive, clear in their communication, and delivered milestones on time.

DP

Dominique Plummeridge

Head of Engineering, Asana Rebel

Berlin, Germany Clutch verified

Mobile App MVP Dev for AI-Powered Fitness Assistant Firm

Their technical skill, creativity, and partnership made the experience feel more like working with a co-founder.

JA

Julia Antoci

CEO, GloFlow

Toronto, Ontario Clutch verified

See all client reviews

FREQUENTLY ASKED

Questions we hear on the discovery call.

Most of these come up before the Sprint 0 proposal is on the table. The answers below match what actually happens once Sprint 0 starts and once the build engagement runs.

  • What does Sprint 0 produce and how is it priced?
    Sprint 0 is a fixed-fee scoping engagement set on the discovery call based on complexity (number of stakeholders, scope of the discovery, integration points to inventory, depth of the design-system work). It runs two to four calendar weeks and produces four concrete deliverables: the overarching UI/UX design and the design system the build will extend, epics and user stories with acceptance criteria ordered into a build roadmap, a billable milestone plan with every milestone defined and priced (covering team size, sprint cadence, billing schedule, and total estimated build cost), and the technical architecture delivered as a scaffolded repository with infrastructure-as-code groundwork.
  • What happens at the end of Sprint 0?
    A go or no-go decision, structured as a working session rather than a sales close. Either side can walk with the Sprint 0 deliverable intact and no further obligation. You walk when scope shifted, when internal alignment changed during the two to four weeks, or when you want to take the deliverable in-house. Leanware walks when scope outgrew your runway, when readiness is weaker than the call suggested, or when technical risk surfaced during scaffolding would break the proposed economics. The go or no-go is not a sales failure when the answer is no. It is the engagement working as designed.
  • How does milestone billing actually work?
    Each milestone has acceptance criteria that were written in Sprint 0 and a billing amount tied to that milestone. The build runs in weekly sprints with end-of-sprint demos. Milestones map to those sprints and the epics defined in Sprint 0, with at least two milestones per month. When a milestone meets its acceptance criteria, you sign off. Billing fires on your sign-off, not on hours logged. If scope changes mid-build, the change becomes a new milestone with its own acceptance criteria and its own billing. The existing milestone keeps its price and its acceptance bar. You can model runway against the milestone schedule because the schedule and the billing are the same artifact.
  • Why a two-to-four-person team and not a bigger one?
    Two to four people is the standard composition because adding people above what the scope warrants rarely improves shipping velocity and adds coordination cost on your side. The mix is full-time engineers paired with the fractional roles your build actually needs (delivery manager, product manager, QA, designer). The composition is set in the Sprint 0 economics summary and committed to in the proposal. When scope genuinely grows, the answer is a new milestone with its own acceptance criteria and its own billing, not more head count on an existing milestone you already priced.
  • How is this different from staff augmentation or hiring through Toptal or Andela?
    Staff-augmentation marketplaces place engineers. Software Product Development ships products. Sometimes people start the conversation thinking they want staff aug and realize partway in that what they actually need is a team that owns the deliverable. The Sprint 0 plus milestone-billed structure is the fixed-scope version of that realization. When point-and-shoot staffing is honestly the right answer, the conversation routes to the Dedicated Software Development Teams line.
  • How is this different from product engineering services from larger firms like HCLTech, IBM, or PwC?
    Larger product engineering services firms are sized for enterprise procurement: multi-team initiatives, multi-month discovery, partner-and-associate staffing models, and budgets that start above what a startup carries. Software Product Development is the boutique alternative. The same scoping-then-milestone-billed structure, but with a lean team and engagement sizes that match a 12 to 24 month runway.
  • How is this different from Bolt, v0, Cursor, or Replit Agent?
    Self-serve AI build tools are real for prototyping and for early-stage builds when the founder is building solo. They become the wrong tool when the build needs production-grade architecture, when the codebase has to be extended by a real engineering team, or when the AI-tool output needs to integrate with existing systems. Some of the strongest qualified leads on this line arrive after hitting that wall on a full-self-serve build, because they have already learned what the tool cannot do. Software Product Development is the next step when the tool has run its course, not a competitor to it for the prototype.
  • Who owns the code and the IP?
    You. The master engagement agreement assigns full ownership of the codebase, the design assets, and any AI prompts or fine-tuned artifacts produced during the engagement to you. Leanware retains rights to reusable infrastructure patterns, internal tooling, and engineering practices that are not specific to your product. The Sprint 0 deliverable is yours from delivery, whether you continue with the build or not.
  • Should I hire in-house instead?
    Sometimes hiring in-house is the right answer and the Sprint 0 deliverable will say so when it is. The engagements where Software Product Development is the better fit are the ones where the build needs to ship on a milestone schedule the board is expecting, where hiring at the right bar would not close on that timeline, or where the AI fluency in the placed team is a meaningful capability gap the in-house plan would not solve.
  • How fast can we start?
    Sprint 0 typically kicks off within one to two weeks of signing. The discovery call runs 30 minutes and is scheduled inside a week. The build engagement starts immediately at Sprint 0 close on a go decision, since the team composition and milestone plan are already set in the Sprint 0 economics summary.
  • What is software product development, and how is it different from custom software development?
    Software product development builds something that will be sold, used, or operated as a product: it has a roadmap, users beyond the team that commissioned it, and a life after launch. Custom software development often means a one-off system built to a fixed specification and handed over. The engineering overlaps; the difference is that product work has to hold up to iteration, so the architecture, the design system, and the release process are set up for the version after this one. Sprint 0 exists to make those decisions before the build starts.
  • What do your AI software development services cover?
    Custom AI development inside a product: LLM applications with retrieval over your data, AI agents and copilots, document and image understanding, predictive scoring, and the model selection, fine-tuning, and evaluation work behind them. Generative AI development follows the same milestone plan as the rest of the build, on the same team. If what you need is AI added to systems you already run rather than a new product, that is the AI Integration and Consulting line. See AI Integration and Consulting
  • How much does software product development cost, and how long does it take?
    Two numbers are set before any build starts. Sprint 0 is a fixed fee set on the discovery call and runs two to four weeks. The build is priced when Sprint 0 closes, as a milestone plan with every milestone defined, priced, and scheduled, so the total cost and the build duration are the same artifact. We do not publish a build rate card because the number depends on scope, integrations, and team composition, and Sprint 0 exists to answer it with engineering rather than a guess. Milestones land at least twice a month, so you see progress and cost move together.
  • Can you add AI to a product we already have?
    Yes. If the product is yours and you want it extended, the build engagement starts from your codebase instead of a blank repository, and Sprint 0 scopes the AI features against what exists. If the AI has to work across systems you run but did not build, such as an ERP, CRM, or support desk, that is the AI Integration and Consulting line, which starts with a fixed-fee assessment.
  • How is AI used in your own development process?
    Every engineer on the build uses AI coding tools in the loop: generation, refactoring, test scaffolding, and review. It shortens routine work; it does not replace senior judgment on architecture, security, or scope, which is why the team stays small and senior rather than large and junior. You get the same bar whether or not your product has AI on screen.
  • Which industries do you build products for?
    Published case studies cover healthcare and dental, financial services and accounting, e-commerce, manufacturing and industrial analytics, education, secure document workflows, and B2B SaaS for recruiting, wellness, and event planning. Domain knowledge is acquired in Sprint 0 with your team; what carries across industries is the engineering and the delivery structure. Browse the case studies
TRACK RECORD
READY TO TALK

Talk to someone who gets your business. And can build the solution.

We walk through what you are building, decide together whether Sprint 0 or a Dedicated Software Development Team is the right shape, and leave you with a concrete next step.

Tell us what you are building and where you are in the build. Someone who understands the business and the engineering will walk through it with you, decide together whether Sprint 0 or a Dedicated Software Development Team is the right shape, and leave you with a concrete next step.

Get in touch Send Us a Message See Dedicated Software Development Teams