Crowdbotics

Crowdbotics, Inc. offers an AI platform that maps an existing software system so that a team can understand it before it modernizes or maintains the system. It was known for managed app development, which combined a build tool with a bench of developers and product managers that belonged to the firm. It calls its approach CodeOps.

From scoping call to live app

Managed app development begins with a scoping call to understand what the client is building. The firm then sends a detailed proposal explaining the full scope of work. Once the proposal is approved, a product manager and a team of developers are assigned, and the client has daily and weekly check-ins until the app is live, followed by ongoing support and iteration. The firm says the client can work with its team or alongside its own in-house developers, whichever suits the project best.

Reusable packages and open source

The platform is built around reusing proven software. The firm says most applications use the same features, so it selects established packages for a given feature set based on what has been used in similar apps, rather than writing each feature from scratch. It describes this as a way to assemble the basic structure of an app quickly, leaving more time for customization. Its core stack is React Native with Django, and it says its expertise extends to other frameworks and languages.

Understanding legacy systems with AI

The newer platform uses AI to map and explain existing systems, which the firm says speeds up modernization and maintenance. It presents this as the hardest part of modernizing a system: knowing how it works in the first place. Its research covers AI-assisted modernization, and it publishes events and customer support material around the approach.

Build stages from requirements to release

A typical build moves through the same stages whichever partner does the work. The team outlines requirements for each feature, prepares placeholder wireframes and walks through the user flows, assesses the technical architecture and designs the data storage, then replaces the wireframes with final design and moves to front-end and back-end development. The firm says clients own the intellectual property and code, can see the cost of new features before building them and can connect the project to tools such as Slack, Trello, JIRA and GitHub.