Frequently Asked Questions

What is Aboard?

Aboard is a team of software experts—and an AI consultancy and software delivery firm. We help organizations assess the overall health of their tech stack and where AI can move the needle, build a clear roadmap, and then actually build the software that’s needed, handle integrations, and build best-in-class data management—fast and at enterprise quality. Unlike firms that specialize in strategy decks without delivery, or tool vendors that sell access to a platform without people, we do both: we advise and we ship.

We call ourselves a solution engineering firm because our solution engineers do the full job—they partner with you to understand your business, deliver insights, design the right solution, and build it using our proprietary AI-accelerated system. Then we support your work after it’s live and continually improve it.

How is Aboard different?

“Consultants” borrow your watch to tell you the time. We’re something different. We’re watchmakers. Our team builds—and we like to build for businesses and organizations. We use a combination of deep knowledge, risk assessment, and our proprietary development platform to deliver great production systems to real clients.

At Aboard, the people giving you the advice are the same people building the software. We’ve worked at the top level of Fortune 100 companies and large NGOs, and we’ve built and sold multiple technology companies. We know what enterprise leaders need, and we know how to deliver it.

How is Aboard different from a traditional software agency?

A traditional agency builds what you specify, by hand, on a timeline measured in quarters or years. Aboard combines experienced solution engineers with our own AI-accelerated platform to compress that timeline dramatically—and to stay engaged as your partner after delivery, not just invoice and move on.

We are experts in the last mile. 95% of AI software initiatives fail. The reason is almost always the final phase: The gap between prototype and production. Aboard has solved that, because our platform is purpose-built for the full software lifecycle—requirements, architecture, design, code, integration, and deployment. We’d love to show you how it works.

Who are the people behind Aboard?

Aboard was founded by Rich Ziade (CEO) and Paul Ford (President). Rich is a serial software entrepreneur and agency veteran who built and sold multiple companies including Readability, Arc90, and Postlight, starting his career in law before becoming a pioneer in API-powered business systems. Paul is one of the technology world’s most respected thinkers and writers, with bylines in Wired, BusinessWeek, and the New York Times—and decades of hands-on experience building real things. Together, they bring strategic depth and genuine technical craft to every engagement.

What kinds of organizations does Aboard work with?

We’ve worked with Fortune 100 companies, large NGOs, insurers, healthcare organizations, B2B data and research firms, and growing mid-market businesses. If your organization has a meaningful software problem—inefficient manual processes, a SaaS tool that doesn’t fit, data locked in legacy systems, or a desire to use AI more effectively—we’re built to help.

What does Aboard’s AI consulting actually involve?

We start where every good engagement starts: By understanding your business. We look at where your processes are slow, expensive, or fragile, where your data is underused, and where AI can create genuine leverage. Then we help you prioritize—building a clear roadmap that sequences quick wins alongside longer-horizon transformation.

Critically, we don’t stop there. We build. Our solution engineers translate your roadmap into working software, using AI at every stage to move faster without compromising quality, security, or accuracy. And once your software is in production, we stay on as your partner.

What does “AI-accelerated development” actually mean in practice?

It means AI is embedded in how our solution engineers work—not as a novelty, but as a core part of the craft. We use AI to analyze your existing data structures, translate complex business logic from legacy systems, generate and test code components, prototype interfaces, and surface integration patterns. Work that used to take months gets done in days.

But AI is only as good as the people directing it. Our engineers use judgment, experience, and domain knowledge to ensure that what AI produces is correct, secure, and genuinely fit for purpose—not just plausible-looking code that breaks under load. The result is enterprise-grade software delivered at a pace that was previously impossible.

Software should be built by humans, for humans. We deliver real thinking and experience—not just “human in the loop.”

Does faster development mean lower quality or cutting corners on security?

No—and this is one of the most important distinctions to understand. AI acceleration doesn’t mean skipping steps. We still do requirements, architecture, design, testing, and secure deployment. Our tools are designed to make each of those steps faster and more accurate, not to bypass them.

In regulated industries like insurance and healthcare, we implement appropriate controls—HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, organization-level data isolation, role-based access, encryption—from the start, not as an afterthought. Our SageSure engagement is a clear example: a production system handling hundreds of thousands of insurance policies annually, built in 4–5 weeks, enterprise-grade throughout.

Can you help us figure out where AI should—and shouldn’t—be applied in our organization?

Yes, and we think this question is underrated. Not every process benefits from AI, and organizations that chase every AI trend usually end up with expensive experiments and no lasting value. Part of what we do in an engagement is help you distinguish high-value AI applications from low-value ones—and be honest with you when the answer is the better solution here is a well-designed workflow, not an AI-based tool.

Our newsletter and podcast address this kind of question frequently—we publish practical thinking on where AI creates real value and where it doesn’t, every week.

What does Aboard’s managed services offering look like?

Managed services means Aboard becomes an ongoing technology partner to your organization—not just for one project, but across your software needs, your AI strategy, and your evolving data and integration requirements. This includes:

• Ongoing software support and enhancement after delivery
• Strategic consultation as AI capabilities evolve and new opportunities emerge
• Monitoring, reliability, and performance management of systems we’ve built
• Roadmap planning and prioritization as your business changes
• Access to our growing library of proprietary tooling and accelerators

This is especially valuable for organizations that want the benefits of a dedicated technology partner without building a large internal engineering team.

Do you build proprietary tools and accelerators to power your work?

Yes—continuously. Aboard uses a suite of tools that we’ve built ourselves, and continue to tweak all the time, combined with all the latest AI tools and processes, and of course traditional elbow grease. And when we build our own tools, we not only maintain them, but continuously improve them based on what we learn working with clients across industries. They’re what allow us to prototype in record time, translate complex business logic with high accuracy, and maintain enterprise standards while moving at AI speed.

This is a meaningful advantage over consultancies that rely only on third-party AI tools: we know exactly what our own processes can achieve, we can extend it for your use case, and we’re not dependent on any single vendor’s roadmap.

Can you help us integrate AI into our existing systems and workflows, without replacing everything?

Yes. We often find that the right approach is to add AI capability to existing systems—automating a manual step here, surfacing an insight there—rather than rebuilding from scratch. We assess your current stack carefully and design solutions that integrate cleanly with what you already have. If a full replacement is warranted, we’ll tell you why and show you the path.

What kinds of software can Aboard build?

CRM systems, ERPs, content management platforms, project management tools, analytics dashboards, multi-tenant data platforms, automated processing pipelines, workflow automation tools, and industry-specific applications. If you have a business problem that software could solve, odds are we’ve worked on something like it before, and we can scope it and build it.

How do you handle complex data migrations and integrations with legacy systems?

This is a core part of what we do, and one where AI gives us a real edge. We’ve used AI to analyze and translate complex SQL Server stored procedure logic into modern application code—maintaining perfect fidelity to the original business rules while eliminating months of risky manual translation. We’ve built integration frameworks that accommodate multiple EHR systems with different data formats and extraction methods simultaneously.

When we start an engagement, we do a thorough assessment of your existing systems, data structures, and integration requirements before writing a line of code.

How fast can Aboard actually deliver software to production?

Much faster than you’d expect. Our timeline depends on scope:

• Smaller-scale, focused custom software: approximately 30 days from kickoff to production
• Complex, verticalized applications with integrations and data migration: approximately 90 days
• Managed services and ongoing transformation engagements: continuous, with early milestones typically within the first 30–60 days

For context: we took SageSure’s policy validation system from kickoff to production in 4–5 weeks—a project that would typically take 6–12 months. The Make an Impact health analytics platform, involving multi-tenant architecture and multi-system EHR integrations serving four live organizations, was delivered in 6 months, versus an estimated 18–24 months with traditional development. Our work with Outsell to modernize their B2B data platform—replacing legacy infrastructure, building AI-driven content ingestion pipelines, and delivering a new client-facing intelligence platform—went from kickoff to production in 4 months.

Do you support the software after it launches?

Yes, always. We don’t build and disappear. Every engagement includes ongoing support. As your business evolves, your software needs to evolve with it—and we’re the right team to do that, because we built it and understand it deeply.

Do you work in regulated industries where security and compliance are critical?

Yes. We have direct experience building for healthcare and insurance, two of the most heavily regulated environments in software. We implement HIPAA-compliant infrastructure, secure multi-tenant data isolation, audit logging, role-based access control, and encrypted storage and transmission as standard when the use case requires it. Compliance is designed in from the start, not patched on afterward.

What is Cadence?

Cadence is Aboard’s proprietary process—coupled with custom-built tooling—for delivering software the right way in the AI era. It’s our answer to a question most firms haven’t asked yet: when AI can execute so quickly, what does good process look like?

The short answer: product thinking comes first. Cadence is structured around six phases that ensure we understand your business deeply before building anything—and that the software we eventually ship is the right solution, not just a fast one.

01  Landscape
We map your market, business model, and competition, so our work begins with a shared understanding of the real world your business operates in.

02  Audit
We examine your users, tools, workflows, and data—and define where friction is costing you time and money.

03  Blueprint
We define your ideal future state: products, systems, and workflows that resolve current inefficiencies and unlock new capabilities. This is where insight becomes design.

04  Architecture
We build the technical foundation—system structure, data modeling, API design—aligned with where you are now and where you want to grow.

05  Migrate
We move you off your old stack safely, handling legacy integrations, data transformation, and migration without breaking the business.

06  Build
Your software takes full shape through staged releases, robust testing, and security audits—resulting in enterprise-grade code at AI speed.

After the software ships, Cadence doesn’t stop. Our team stays close, tracking changes in your business and industry so your roadmap keeps getting smarter.

How does Cadence differ from Agile or other development frameworks?

The past decade of software delivery was shaped by Agile: sprints, standups, Kanban boards—rituals designed to manage the human bottleneck by breaking work into manageable chunks. But what used to take a team months can now take AI an hour or two. Agile wasn’t built for agents.

Cadence is our attempt to address that reality. It asks a different question: When execution becomes commoditized, how do we ensure we’re building the right thing? The answer is to invest more deeply in understanding the problem—before a single line of code is written. That’s what the Landscape, Audit, and Blueprint phases are for. Cadence moves the craft from execution to strategy, where it belongs.

What does Cadence do that AI coding tools don’t?

AI coding tools—even very good ones—are good at executing. They produce code quickly. What they can’t do is understand your business, challenge your assumptions, identify the friction your team has stopped seeing, or make strategic tradeoffs on your behalf.

Cadence is the harness around those tools. It gives our solution engineers a structured way to understand the full problem space, ideate on strategy with you, and then direct AI execution with clarity and precision. The result isn’t a fast prototype—it’s a robust, working, secure solution to the actual problem your business faces.

What does it feel like to work through Cadence as a client?

It starts fast. Within the first week, you’ll have a working V1 of real software—not a deck, not a set of wireframes. From there, we iterate quickly, bringing your team in for testing and feedback at every stage. Changes are visible almost immediately.

But the most valuable thing clients usually say about the process is that it surfaced problems they didn’t know they had—constraints in their data, friction in their workflows, dependencies in their systems that would have become expensive surprises later. That’s the Landscape and Audit phases doing their job.

Can you show me what an engagement actually looks like?

Here are three recent examples:

What industries has Aboard worked in?

Insurance, healthcare, financial services, B2B data and information services, media, nonprofits, and more. We’ve served Fortune 100 companies and large global NGOs, as well as growing organizations that needed right-sized software. If your industry is specialized or regulated, tell us—we’ll be straightforward about our relevant experience.

What does an engagement with Aboard look like from the client’s perspective?

It starts with a conversation—not a lengthy RFP process. We want to understand your business, your pain points, and what success looks like. From there, we move into Cadence: mapping your landscape, auditing your current operations, blueprinting the solution, designing the architecture, handling migration, and building—iterating with you and showing you working software early and often.

You have visibility into what’s being built at every stage. After launch, we stay on as your support partner.

What do you need from us to get started?

You don’t need a fully formed specification. The most important things are a clear description of the problem you’re trying to solve, access to the right stakeholders on your team, and—for integrations—documentation of or access to your existing systems. Our solution engineers are experienced at drawing out requirements even when they’re not fully defined.

How involved will our team need to be during development?

We prefer engaged clients—your feedback is what shapes the software into something that truly fits your business. We show prototypes early, iterate frequently, and ask questions throughout. That said, we’re also experienced at working independently when your team’s time is limited; we’ll tell you when we need input and make good use of your time when we have it.

Can we start with a smaller engagement and grow from there?

Absolutely. Many clients begin with a focused, 30-day engagement to solve one specific problem, then expand into a broader partnership as they see results. We’re built for long-term relationships, not one-off projects.

What if we already have an internal development team?

We work alongside internal teams frequently. Aboard can accelerate a specific project your team doesn’t have capacity for, bring AI expertise to areas where your team wants to develop capability, or serve as a strategic layer that helps your engineers work more effectively with AI tooling. We’re collaborative by nature.

How much does it cost to work with Aboard?

Pricing depends on the scope, complexity, and duration of the engagement—and no two engagements are identical. We don’t publish fixed rates because the right answer for a 30-day focused software build looks very different from a long-term managed services and AI transformation partnership.

What we can tell you is that our AI-accelerated approach delivers dramatically more value per dollar than traditional agencies or big-firm consultancies—because we move faster, build with precision, and stay engaged after delivery. Reach out and we’ll have a direct conversation about your situation, what we’d recommend, and what it would cost.

How do I get in touch or request a demo?

Get in touch at aboard.com. We’d love to talk through your business problems and how we might go about solving them—often a 30-minute conversation is enough to show you exactly how we’d approach your problem. Our solution engineers are hands-on and eager to talk specifics before you commit to anything.

Does Aboard publish anything I can read or listen to before we talk?

Do we ever! We publish a weekly newsletter and a podcast, both completely free, that represent the genuine intellectual work of our founders and the broader Aboard team. These aren’t marketing materials; they’re real thinking about AI, software development, enterprise technology, and what organizations need to do to navigate the changes underway.

What is the Aboard Podcast?

‘Software in the Age of AI’ is a podcast hosted by Rich Ziade and Paul Ford, available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube. Episodes cover how AI is changing software development, business strategy, and organizational life — with guests that have included the Chief Product and Technology Officer of Etsy, healthcare technology executives, journalists covering the world of AI and tech, and leading AI practitioners.

Recent episodes have addressed questions like whether product managers should feel threatened or empowered by AI, how AI is transforming healthcare, and how to set up organizations for real AI adoption. The archive goes way back—it’s an extensive body of thinking you can dig into for free at aboard.com/podcast.

What is the Aboard Newsletter?

The Aboard Newsletter, written by Paul Ford and Rich Ziade, lands in inboxes every week. It covers emerging trends in AI and software, practical advice for navigating the AI revolution, and clear-eyed analysis of where AI is creating real value—and where it isn’t. Topics have ranged from why most AI projects fail (and how to fix that), to how organizations should think about the relationship between artifacts and processes, to what AI acceleration means for how expertise is valued and priced.

It’s free. Subscribe at aboard.com/newsletter. It’s one of the clearest signals we can give you of how we think—which is ultimately what you’re hiring when you engage Aboard.

Why do you put so much into free content?

Because we believe that the organizations best positioned to capture value from AI are the ones that truly understand what’s happening—not just what AI tools can do in a demo, but how they fit into real workflows, real teams, and real business constraints. Our podcast and newsletter are how we share that understanding publicly. And frankly, it’s how we stay sharp: writing and talking about this every week keeps our thinking rigorous in a way that only benefits our clients.

How does Aboard ensure that AI outputs are accurate and reliable—not just plausible?

This is the right question to ask, and most clients ask it once they’ve seen what poorly supervised AI work looks like. Our solution engineers review and validate AI-generated work at every stage. We test business logic against the original requirements. We run integration tests against live systems before deployment. And because our platform was built by people who understand what production software requires, it’s designed to produce code and configurations that meet enterprise standards—not impressive-looking prototypes that break under real conditions.

What does ‘solution engineering’ mean—how is it different from software development or consulting?

Traditional consultants diagnose problems and write recommendations. Traditional developers implement specifications. Solution engineers do the full job: they understand your business at a strategic level, design the right solution, build it, and stay engaged with you over time. They combine business acumen with deep technical skill, and they use our AI platform to work at a pace that multiplies their effectiveness. It’s a discipline we created because we found that the gap between strategy and delivery was where most value was lost.

What should I do if I’m not sure whether Aboard is the right fit for my problem?

Talk to us. We’d rather have a 30-minute honest conversation and tell you we’re not the right fit than waste your time or ours. If we’re not the right partner for your specific situation, we’ll tell you that and try to point you in the right direction. If we are, you’ll know it quickly—because we’ll be able to speak concretely to your problem in the first conversation.