Rebuilding a consumer app for a European product company
An outsourced app that broke with every release became a product the team can ship on a steady cadence — rebuilt in React Native with automated testing and a release pipeline the client controls.
The situation
The company had a live consumer app and a growing list of problems: releases that broke existing features, crashes that surfaced only after users complained, and a previous vendor relationship that ended with little documentation and no tests. The founders needed a senior partner who would take responsibility for the product — not another pair of hands.
The approach
We began with an audit: codebase, crash reports, store history, and the release process as it actually worked. The conclusion was a staged rebuild rather than a risky rewrite-in-one-go — the existing backend stayed, while the app was rebuilt in React Native behind it.
Authentication, payments, and notifications were reimplemented with automated tests covering the paths that had previously broken in production. A CI/CD pipeline took the release process from manual and anxious to routine: builds, tests, and staged rollouts to TestFlight and Google Play on a fixed cadence.
Throughout, the founders worked directly with the engineer doing the work — weekly demonstrations of working software, trade-offs explained in plain language, and decisions documented.
The outcome
Crash reports dropped from a weekly firefight to an exception worth investigating when it appears.
Releases moved from ad-hoc and risky to a fixed, predictable cadence.
Store reviews began reflecting the product’s reliability instead of its release days.
Where it stands now
We continue on a maintenance and improvement retainer. The client’s own roadmap drives each release; our job is to keep the product healthy while it grows.