iPrivy came to Shipverra with a business case and a founder's description of the product, but no formally defined scope, the point where many serverless development projects either stall in discovery or drift from what the business actually meant. There was no fixed spec to build from, just a founder's account of what the platform needed to do, and a need to move into development without months of upfront documentation typically expected before a serverless microservices architecture project begins.

The product itself was a secure file-sharing platform, letting organizations share sensitive files over a proprietary encryption framework. But the real challenge wasn't the file-sharing mechanics, it was building a plan the business could commit to without asking the founder to first produce a spec document that didn't yet exist.

Shipverra worked directly from the client's description, translating it into use cases and user stories, and estimating cost before development started, without waiting for a formal scope document. That estimate became the basis for a two-phase build rather than a single fixed-price contract, keeping the project moving while detail was still being worked out phase to phase.

The platform was built as a serverless microservices architecture: Python services handling application logic, DynamoDB for storage, and AWS Lambda running compute, all hosted on AWS. That combination is a common shape for serverless development services because it scales with usage rather than requiring provisioned servers, which mattered for a startup still validating its product, including the secure file-sharing capability at its core.

On the Shipverra side, the team covered the full build: a backend developer, a frontend developer, an architect, a designer, and a project manager, with iPrivy's CEO involved directly throughout. Weekly status meetings tracked progress against the two phases, and day-to-day coordination ran over Slack rather than a heavier project-management layer.