Weekly news

13! This time 13 is a lucky number. And that's all because we congratulate our lead designer on the 13th anniversary of his work in our company. So we really want this year with such a mystical figure to be successful for one of our oldest employees and bring only good things to him.

Our Lead designer has grown up with the company, his expertise, experience and professionalism grew and improved before our eyes. And today we proudly look at the achievements of one of our company members.

First of all, we of course wish him health, energy, creative inspiration, a sense of interest in new projects and cases. Let the work bring moral satisfaction and a decent financial result. Let the desire to remain part of our team and be a good example for new guys does not leave for many years to come!
Move forward!

And if you are interested in joining our company, please email: hr@abz.agency

Today we will continue the story of our new K3 office, which opened on February 13 and has been fully operational for some time now. The team has settled into their new working and creative space, adding their own unique atmosphere while maintaining our unified corporate style.

K3 employees have already the positive aspects and advantages of the new location:

• - good location and convinient transport interchange
• - developed infrastructure and a stable situation with electricity in the district
• - comfortable conditions inside the office and new renovation

During the renovation and equipping of K3, our goal was to create a comfortable, cozy, and productive environment for the entire team. We believe that we have achieved this and plan to continue improving our facilities. In the near future, we will be searching for a new space for our next office in a new location.

There are still free places in K3 for new employees. We invite all willing and interested candidates.
Contact us: hr@abz.agency

Recently, our company had another pleasant occasion for celebration. We congratulate one of our PMs with 2 years of work in our team.

Looking back, it was a really active and fruitful period for him. Adaptation in the team and tacking new knowledge, skills and experience. Various projects, communication with new clients, organizing the work of his team, of course growing responsibility and a whole range of unforeseen circumstances for all of us. And we are very pleased to state that by the end of 2 years our employee has grown significantly and succeeded in all areas of work.

Of course, we wish him new achievements, interesting projects, well-coordinated work in the team and personal satisfaction from the work and its results.

And we also want to wish ourselves such hardworking and motivated guys who are also ready to learn and develop.

By the way, we are open to recruiting new employees to our team.

Send your questions and suggestions by email: hr@abz.agency

Today we will show you a little backstage from our new office (K3 - our third office in Kyiv), which is almost ready for launch and starts working from February 13th. We tried to take every possible detail into consideration to make it fit our standards.

K3 is a 7-minute walk from the Taras Shevchenko metro station and is located in a brand new Business Center (it was built in 2019). Given the realities of today and the difficult situation with power supply the location has an advantage of stable power supply, autonomous boiler room, elevators and a 24-hour security post.

Interior of the office is decorated in a common corporate loft style, like other offices of the company.
The office has done the following:

• - Loft style walls and ceiling (exposed concrete)
• - Kitchen (new Krups coffee machine, 10l kettle, 7-stage cleaning filter, refrigerator, microwave are waiting for our employees)
• - Bar counter for 6 persons
• - Toilet and shower (This is a bonus for those who like to ride a bike to work for example)
• - Ventilation (exhaust) of all rooms
• - Preparation for future supply ventilation
• - Meeting room for 3 and 6 people
• - Redundant wiring for PPS EcoFlow
• - Individual lighting of workplaces (as in all offices)
• - Casers, Ajax alarm and electronic lock

The first 4 employees will already enter the office on the 13th to launch the office. But in our new space there are still free equipped places.

To join our team, please contact hr@abz.agency

Happy Valentine's Day ❤️❤️❤️

Despite the fact that it is still winter around, this day can be called one of the brightest and warmest days of the year, as it is the “international day of love”

Love is that huge force that can overcome any difficulties, give you super power and great strength, inspire you to wonderful and ambitious achievements, and present you with feelings of happiness and flight. May your beloved and dear person always be with you next to whom your world will be brighter, more colorful and happy.

We wish you to be surrounded with love in all spheres of your life, and let it always be a place and time for real romance of course!

Just one glance of our cat says “A cat in gloves catches no mice”. And we completely agree with him. So we are ready to work as hard as possible despite the surrounding circumstances. Of course, we keep the brand, continue working to improve the quality of our product, raise the common spirit and motivate the team. Everyone knows to get a good work result, you need the best, high-quality, progressive and reliable tools.

Therefore, in January we slightly supplemented and updated the office hardware, so we bought:

• - 7pcs Apple MacBook PRO 14 based on M1 PRO (Late 2022)
• - 12pcs monitors 4K LG 27UL850
• - Test devices Apple iPhones, Apple iPads, Android phones and tablets
• - All extras needed for +7 fully equipped new workspaces.

But that's not all! Furthermore, in February, a new K4 office will be opened (it's our 4th office in Kyiv).

And we invite new guys to join our team.
Send your applications to hr@abz.agency

Today we will share with you the news and atmosphere from our office in Tallinn. Despite the common perception of Estonia as a calm and steady place, which is associated with calmness, regularity and even some unhurriedness, in our company the team works in “Fast and furious” mode (as evidenced by the office's racing car in the photo).

We are ready to expand our "abz working family" in Estonia and welcome new employees. So, we invite:

• - Web Designer
• - QA engineer
• - Front-end developer

All interested can contact hr@abz.agency to find out all the details.

It's hard to believe that two years have already passed since our colleagues joined our team at abz.agency. To celebrate this milestone, we decided to congratulate both individuals on the same day.

We wanted to make sure that each of them received a special gift that they had been wanting. One received a pair of Xbox wireless headphones and the other received a Krups capsule coffee machine with a capsule test kit. We are thrilled to have them on our team and look forward to many more years of working together. Congratulations to both of you!

At abz.agency, we place a high value on our team members and strive to cultivate lasting relationships, both within our organization and with our clients. We are always looking for talented individuals to join our team, if you are interested contact us on hr@abz.agency

We are excited to announce a new fluffy addition to our team! Although he may still be a junior member, he is already making his presence known with his diligent attendance of all meetings and stand-ups. He can often be found purring approvingly as he lounges beside the speaker. So, everyone is happy to share all their knowledge.

Our office manager found him on a cold winter day warming up under her car in the parking lot outside the office and with the approval of management, we were able to welcome him into our office. We quickly provided all the necessary supplies and our team members even brought in some fun toys for him to play with. We're excited to have him as part of our team from now on!

We gave him a nostalgic name which means a small piece of charcoal which is the same as the name of the Donetsk-Kyiv passenger train which is symbolic of connection to our roots.

Presents are always nice to receive and it is even more pleasant to receive them from our clients. We would like to thank the client "Invest" (project under NDA) for a nice gift and attention during these holidays.

We are always pleased to collaborate with you! I would especially like to thank you for staying with us during these difficult times for our country. We, in turn, do our best to always ensure stable and high-quality work!

We are continuing to invest in the capacity of our backup power supply to ensure that our offices remain well-equipped and comfortable for our employees regardless of rolling blackouts. Some of the updates we have made include:

• - Installing a PPS EcoFlow Delta MAX 2000 in office K1
• - Adding a gasoline generator for 8 kW in office K1
• - Implementing dedicated backup office wiring for PPS in both office K1 and K2
• - Adding a PPS EcoFlow Delta in office K2
• - Installing StarLink backup connection in office K2

We are dedicated to maintaining a warm, well-lit, and internet-connected workspace for our team and the benefit of our clients. If you are interested in joining our team, please reach out to hr@abz.agency.

As the holiday season approaches, our team at abz.agency would like to extend our warmest wishes to all of our valued clients. We are grateful for the opportunity to work with you throughout the year, and appreciate the trust you have placed in us.

This year brought us a lot of challenges, but we are grateful for the opportunity to work with such dedicated and supportive clients. Your collaboration and understanding has helped us overcome these challenges and continue to deliver high-quality web development services.

As we look ahead to the new year, we are excited to continue partnering with you to bring your web development projects to life. Thank you for being a part of our journey, and we wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year.

We hope that the holiday season brings you joy, peace, and plenty of time to relax and recharge. We look forward to continuing to work with you and helping you achieve your goals in the new year.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from all of us at abz.agency!

Congratulations to one of our PMs on their 3 year anniversary with abz.agency! We are grateful to have such a dedicated and hardworking team member as part of our organization.

Thank you for your contributions to our team and for your ability to navigate complex tasks and turn client's thoughts into clear and concise project requirements. Here's to many more years of success and achievement of all set goals. As a token of our appreciation, we gifted you with a pair of AirPods Pro 2. Wishing you continued good health and prosperity.

We are looking for strong middle and senior node.js developers specifically for a cool and challenging, but stable long term project running for over 3 years since 2019. You will be working with huge traffic volumes and vast amounts of data. This project would be your prime opportunity to develop unique skills adjacent to data processing and analytics. Be ready to brainstorm and solve challenging issues in a dynamic environment with a team of like minded people.

We will gladly welcome both Kyiv as well as Tallinn based developers into our comfortable and well placed offices. We arrange everything necessary so you can focus on the project without any disruptions from all necessary hardware, facilities, snacks to batteries, generators and reserve connection as needed.

Sounds great? Contact hr@abz.agency to join us!

Our K3 Office (3rd office in Kyiv) has started planned renovations this week which should be complete by Christmas. We will be maintaining the same Loft style that we use in all our offices. Location is within a comfortable 7 minute walk distance from the metro station Tarasa Shevchenko in a warm and cozy business center (2019 construction). Magnetic passes at the entrance with security, multiple elevators and big windows.

Do you want to work with us in a fresh office? Then send us a letter at hr@abz.agency right away. We will be happy to see you!

Last week, we bought a gasoline generator for our K1 office (Kyiv) to ensure steady operation regardless of circumstance. Our foreman invited electricians and they rewired our electrical panel to include an automatic generator/city switch for electricity.

Now we have a specific algorithm for blackouts:

• - When there is no electricity for a relatively short time, first we use EcoFlow battery and a dedicated optic cable internet provider which works during most outages.
• - If there is no electricity for more than 4 hours, we connect the generator and StarLink as a reserve option.

  We have all bases covered, so we can work without any disruptions both during scheduled 2-4 hour rolling blackouts or autonomously by alternating between using EcoFlow battery and a generator to power the office and charge the EcoFlow battery.

  There are no emergencies for us, just organizational issues to solve so we can continue our work on schedule.

This week, we were celebrating the 3 year anniversary of joining abz.agency for one of our backend developers. He received gifts which will enhance his comfort at home: Apple Home Pod and ergonomic office chair.

Thank you for being a great part of our team! We wish you joy in both personal and work life! We join all the wishes from colleagues and hope that they will all come true in the near future and we will see it happening!

With each week we are more prepared to rolling blackouts which became a part of routine for us. This week we’ve added even more hardware updates which help mitigate impacts on our productivity.

Today we equipped our K1 office with:

• - EcoFlow PRO high capacity batteries
• - Wired fiber optic provider internet provider which works even when there is no electricity
• - Starlink as a reserve option to ensure our 100% availability
• - Master electricians installed electrical wiring for lighting and sockets directly from EcoFlow batteries
• - On Friday, the same will be done for K2 office

On 8th of November we will be celebrating the 17th anniversary of our founding! 🔥 🎁 🎂 We remember Financial crisis of 2008, War in Donbass of 2014, War in Ukraine of 2022 but we continued to work and provide quality services no matter the situation. We pay stable and predictable pay for our team and do everything to develop them both professionally and personally. We do all of this and more for our clients!

With us you can always count on stability and quality! Come and see for yourself 😀

We wish everyone a happy halloween 🎃🎃🎃! We already thematically decorated our offices for an extra spooky atmosphere. Frequent rolling blackouts this week also helped to add spookiness, but we fight darkness with organization.

Our clients ask us how we deal with blackouts and other unpredictable situations in a way that they feel no difference at all while working with us. The answer is simple, but challenging for many companies:  preparation and reinvestment in all necessary hardware. We work only on MacBook PRO, their battery is enough for 6-10 hours, we also distribute LTE via mobile hotspots in an organized manner, so the only inconvenience is that the guys do not have an opportunity to make coffee : )

USPS has the motto: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” our version for this year would sound like this “Neither financial crisis, nor threat of war or total blackouts will prevent us from delivering your project on time and with the required quality.”

If you want a stable outsourcing partner who you can always rely on, just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to walk you through all the steps to start.

Solid foundation is necessary if you want to build any complex structure, for our team company regulations are that foundation upon which we stand. For all the time that we were working with our clients we constantly improved our regulations to always fit the changing environment and incorporate the whole sum of company experience which constantly grows.

Last iteration of our organizational regulations was introduced this September and now we are actively working on updating our technical regulations and internship plans. If you want to feel our structuring Influence on your project we are waiting for your ideas at info@abz.agency

Yesterday, at our weekly meeting with PMs and the company management, it was announced that our Kyiv offices had physically run out of space for new employees. So, the management plans to open a 3rd office in Kyiv and considering the location of the other two offices, it would be convenient to cover the 3rd part of Kyiv.

Previously, offices in Kyiv were opened on the left and right banks of the Dnieper. Office 3 will be on the right bank of the Dnieper, but will be geographically shifted further from another one to make it more convenient for some of the guys. Kyiv is a big city and if you can reduce the daily commute from 1-1.5 hours to 15-30 minutes for employees, this is a huge bonus.

We still have spots open in Tallinn, so the HR department won't have an opportunity to rest yet ;)

Would you like to work with TOP technical stack? Would you like to learn from colleagues with broad expertise? Do you want to get off the treadmill and develop your skills? So, complete the test task, pass a couple of interviews then go through a month traineeship period and you’ll open the door to new opportunities. It is not going to be easy, we require employees to work hard and develop their skills at a fast pace.

According to our recruitment plan for October we are looking to hire:

• - Backend developer (PHP Laravel) - 2 opening
• - Front-end developer (React, Vue) - 2 openings
• - Backend developer (Node.js) - 1 opening
• - QA engineer - 2 opening
• - PM - 1 opening

We are waiting for you hr@abz.agency

This week we implemented sweeping changes to the organizational structure of our company by overhauling and streamlining internal company regulation documents and introducing the Lead PM positions. These changes are focused on building more adaptable structures which we can scale further while growing and hiring new people.

Our main principle and core objective stays the same: to deliver projects on time and with the required quality. In addition to that new changes focus on client’s comfort while working with us and proper crisis management in unpredictable situations.

You can be sure that if any external problem arises our team will do everything possible to solve the problem and keep you updated until it's resolved. If you want to be always confident that your project is in safe hands, just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to help you get started.

In the past we have had successful iOS and Android app development branches, but due to drop in wider demand for app development we ultimately decided to close them down. However, some of our dedicated long term clients wanted to keep all of their development efforts with us and needed to spread their offering both to Android Play Store and iOS App store.

After research we found that React Native fits best for this task: it allows us to develop native apps for both iOS and Android based on a single JavaScript codebase (we can even reuse some parts of the code from the front-end part of the website). This allowed us to quickly close this gap in projects where it was necessary while being lean and flexible as a company.

Currently we are actively expanding our React Native development capabilities by improving our frontend developers skill sets. We’ve developed a set of individual tasks within our PDP (Personal Development Plan) program. Developer, who completes all tasks, acquires all necessary skills to bridge the differences between working with React.js for web development and React Native development.

If you have a multiplatform idea we will be glad to help you bring it to life, just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to help you get started.

This week in our T1 (Tallinn) office we celebrated the 4th anniversary of our Lead PM joining our company. He received a small but very fun gift of a DJI Mini 2 quad copter.

We are truly grateful for all your work! There were many difficulties on your way, but a smile, enthusiasm and perseverance allowed you to find the strength in yourself, while remaining a gentle and pleasant person. We wish you less ASAP moments in your work and personal life ;)

Last Saturday, we all met at the K1 office which is our left bank Kyiv office. Everyone arrived at an agreed time by 11 a.m. and the office manager quickly distributed tasks among the team. Everyone received a pair of gloves, a rag, detergent and a respirator. We turned on the music and got into cleaning.

Walls were wiped from the dust that had accumulated over time. All surfaces were dusted: cabinets, shelves, tables, appliances, etc. Other guys were painting the walls to freshen up the white paint. Then the team split up. Some of the guys went to wash the huge panoramic windows, but don't worry the office is on the first floor. The second team started cleaning the floor. We all took a break together and shared hot pizza! Around 6 pm, the work was done. Thanks to all the guys who came to help with the office voluntarily and build stronger bonds. The office shines more than ever!

At the end I heard a reply from one of the girls on our team: "You are welcome, but we did it for ourselves." These are the best words that summarize an idea of subbotnik which is a tradition of voluntary work for yourself and community. Our CEO believes that there is no better team building than working together with everyone. We do everything with utmost attention to quality, even washing the floor ;)

As per our recruitment plan for September we are looking to hire:

• - Data analyst - 1 opening
• - Front-end developer (React, Vue) - 3-5 openings
• - QA engineer - 1 opening
• - PM - 1 opening
• - Backend PHP - 2 opening
• - Sales manager - 1 opening

Join us and work with a cutting edge top tech stack and learn from colleagues with years of broad expertise. We provide every employee with their own personalized IDP (Individual Development Plan) so they can grow and develop alongside the company. All you need to do is complete the test task, pass a couple of interviews and complete a month of intensive paid internship. It won’t be easy but at the end of internship you will surely feel like you’ve reached a new level.

If you are up to the task you can find more information here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/

Even more upgrades arrived this week! We bought a brand new batch of 14 and 16 inch MacBook Pro on the M1 Pro platform. We do our best to ensure the best equipment and conditions are available to our team so they can reach the highest efficiency without being limited by hardware.

Our approach to development and all processes around is to maximize efficiency without compromising quality by streamlining every possible step and detail. You can benefit from this efficiency by working with us, just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to help you get started.

Our K1 office is already a year old, it’s time to shake things up and make some changes! We broke down a wall and transformed our CEO’s personal office into additional open space for our ever growing team.

We’ve set up five new comfortable workplaces:

• - MacBook Pro (M1, 16Gb)
• - 4K professional displays
• - Ergonomic chairs
• - All necessary peripherals
• - Panoramic view over city skyline

Our company grows with each coming day and you have the opportunity to scale your development efforts with us. Just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to consult you.

Today, on behalf of the company and entire team congratulated one of our QA specialists on the 3 year anniversary of working in the company. She received a small but nice Apple Watch SE gift.

I would like to join everything that has been said by colleagues and wish for good health, professional development and interesting projects!

We treasure our team members and build long lasting relationships both internally and externally. If you are looking for a long term outsourcing partner you can find out more about the agency and contact us on our website https://abz.agency

One of our Kyiv offices had two simple glass meeting rooms. This week our brand pattern and logo accentuated the loft style of the office. Now everything is complete exactly like we planned in our 3D model.

As with any project, the details are everything. Our task is to create a PRD (Product Requirements Document) that describes the project down to the smallest detail and takes into consideration all features and specifics.

We focus on developing complete projects exactly according to PRD and mockups from start to finish. More details here https://abz.agency/product-requirement-document/

Today our HR department received a new talent recruitment plan for August and September. The company is actively improving and expanding its talent reserve. Even more vacancies are now open in Kyiv (Ukraine) and Tallinn (Estonia) offices.

Open positions for August

• - Frontend developer (3-5 positions)
• - QA specialist (1 position)
• - Data Analyst (1position)

Preliminary open positions for September

• - Frontend developer (3 positions)
• - QA specialist (1 position)
• - Project Manager (1position)

Join us and let’s grow together! More details here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/

It’s nice when the upper management works closely with the team to solve any ongoing issues. Let me tell you a short story.

A year has passed since we moved to a large and beautiful loft-style office on the left bank of the Dnieper in Kyiv. At that time our CEO has designed and implemented his own office in a spacious room, with floor-to-ceiling panoramic windows.

Now two offices in Kyiv have run out of space to accommodate our constantly growing team. Today we had a meeting discussing how we can solve this. Our CEO gathered all the project managers and the office manager to show a solution: an updated 3D model of his personal office with 6 comfortable workplaces. In the meantime he will move to work in a small, modest warehouse.

This is how management should always act:

• - Be with the team.
• - Work directly with guys.
• - Always be one message away from clients.

Interested in trying to work with us?  Just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to consult you.

Tallinn. Office started.

How can we become closer to the EU? Working directly in the EU is the answer :)

We are pleased to announce that our first office is already up and running and today is the third workday in it for 5 of our employees that are trailblazing a new location.

We are actively expanding our team both in Tallinn as well as Kyiv to accommodate ever growing demand from our clients who need more resources for their groundbreaking projects.

More information here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/

abz.agency® is steadily growing and welcoming new people into our ranks. While we are busy with our current projects we never stop thinking how we can further sustain and accelerate this growth. Which is why we pay close attention to our sales, client onboarding and promotion.

Our approach in this direction is built on the same approach that drives our development: exhaustive instructions and guidelines for our sales managers to follow to ensure quality and consistency. We believe in being completely honest and transparent from the first contact and for all years of cooperation to follow, so we are very direct and do everything possible to avoid giving any false expectations going into the project. Every client has a right to make informed decisions without being misled with overly optimistic promises.

We are expanding sales department and looking for new sales and lead generation specialists, contact our HR to discuss available openings here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/

Tallinn, Estonia. Our new office “T1”. Located downtown, in the business center. Soon it will be ready to accommodate 12 comfortable workspaces with 2 additional rooms for meetings and recreation. It has a big kitchen and a bar counter that can be used for relaxation, meetings, lunches or by its primary purpose : )

We just received the keys to the office. The team works on necessary supplies, contracts and other things while our CEO as always works on the interior design and 3D modeling. We are all full of anticipation and busy with the whole process of opening a new office. When everything is ready, we will share a photo of the new office.

We had been preparing for a long time to implement internal training presentations in our company to give everyone a format to share their expertise. For the 3rd month now, we arrange mini presentations every Tuesday at lunchtime. Some of the guys are preparing presentations on brand new technologies that we have not adopted yet while others use this opportunity to further explore current already implemented technologies, patterns and approaches.

This allows all the guys that focus on specific areas to learn something new outside of it within our company. As people say they need to “just reach out their hand” and knowledge is already there. Our guys have a lot of expertise in the company and are always happy to share with colleagues.

Based on the results of 3 months of presentations, we have implemented quite a lot of changes in our current projects. Additionally, this allows the speaker to influence others and contribute to the training of colleagues. Make a contribution to the company and projects that are currently under development.

We are growing fast! There are only four workplaces left across two Kyiv offices, no more room to fit any more people for now. But not for long, we plan to recruit new guys to fill these spots and expand even further by opening a 3rd office in Kyiv or in western Ukraine.

Join us and work with a cutting edge top tech stack. We provide every employee with their own personalized IDP (Individual Development Plan) so they can grow and develop alongside the company.

You can find more information here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/

Our clients often have reservations about jumping into Dedicated Team format before they know us well and fully understand the value that we can bring to their business. This is completely normal and we always encourage well thought out and informed decision making, because it builds a stable foundation for long term cooperation.

In this case our clients start from a smaller scale (120-320 hours) self-contained tasks like a landing page or specific module development on WPE basis to get a feel for working with our team and then transition to a full dedicated team with weekly output equal or exceeding the total scope of the initial trial project.

If you have any questions about working with us just send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to help you. More info you can get here https://abz.agency/dedicated-team/

Dedicated team format fits best for your new business, startup or alr active project that needs to be redesigned. Just choose a pace at which you want to move in the development within a range of 120 to 480 hours per week and we are ready to go. We will ensure the stability and predictability of the development speed chosen by you throughout the entire time of cooperation (often from 1 to 5 or even up to 7+ years).

Get your own fully staffed IT department and move confidently at your chosen development speed. More details here: https://abz.agency/dedicated-team/

No matter what anyone says, it’s still nice to get together in the meeting room and discuss a project. Of course, not everyone can fit in the same room or even in the same office, the guys are spread across 3 offices. But the face to face joint work creates a certain mood, one can say a state of mind - which drives to create. This energy unites and inspires. It gives you a feeling of belonging, that you are not alone.

The company is growing and developing. Join us and let’s grow together https://abz.agency/team-and-careers

The main news for today is that we opened both offices in Kyiv and everyone started this work week already at the office (except for 4 people who will arrive a bit later by May 23). Office is buzzing with activity and energy. It's so motivating to get back to work at your favorite workplace and to a normal life at home 🙂

We are always welcome to new people who are interested in joining our team, take a look at available openings here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers

On May 16th we are planning to reopen both offices in Kyiv (on the left and right Dnipro bank) and go back to our usual workflow.

The nature of Ukrainian Carpathians is very beautiful, but I still long for the big city atmosphere. Can’t wait to resume an active schedule of a city dweller. Work during the day, self development and rest in the evening. The weekend is also always full of things to do.

Nothing is better than a trusted team and comfortable workplace, even our office walls help. Everyone anticipates seeing colleagues again to share achievements and results of work.

We are also always welcome to new people who are interested in joining our team, take a look at available openings here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers

Our company is getting closer to the European Union. As a first step in April we opened an LLC in the EU. In May we plan to open an office and start hiring staff for the European branch.

As usual, we will continue to grow and develop our internal regulations, best practices and experience which are the foundation of our approach. In the meantime we plan to expand the company and focus more on the dedicated team format https://abz.agency/dedicated-team/. However, this does not mean that we stop working in WPE format https://abz.agency/wpe/, on the contrary, it is one of the most common stepping stones to a dedicated team and is absolutely invaluable for our clients. If you have any questions, send an email to info@abz.agency and our client managers will be happy to consult you.

Time passes and clouds give way to the sun. Our beautiful land wakes up in spring and along with it everyone gets a boost to their energy. The work is moving faster and faster every day. In May, we plan to resume work in both of our Kyiv offices. Guys want to get back to their usual lives which includes working from an office.

The company also does not stand still and moves forward at a growing pace. At the moment, 8 new guys are undergoing an active internship. By developing our company we contribute to developing the country.

Happy Catholic Easter! In Ukraine we just celebrated Palm Sunday, which is a holiday before the Orthodox Easter that will be next Sunday.

Let these holidays unite us all in yearning for peace and prosperity for people all over the world, so that everyone can safely work to improve the lives of everyone and enjoy the fruits of this labor.

Life in Kyiv is starting to get back on track. Our office downtown is already working for the third week straight and we plan to restart the second office on the left bank of Dnipro in a couple weeks. Some of our guys are already actively planning their trips back to Kyiv.

At the moment you have a great opportunity to join our team, we currently only have 3 vacancies left: a frontend developer (React / Vue) and 2 openings for a Node.js (NestJS / ExpressJS) backend developer.

More details here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/. If you want to join our team, contact us at hr@abz.agency

We are looking for frontend React/Vue developers and backend Node.js developers to join our team. You will work on interesting and challenging projects from all over the world in a great team of 40+ talented people together with other frontend and backend developers, project managers, lead devs, designers, QA specialists. We deeply believe in personal development and actively invest our resources so everyone has ample opportunity to grow.

More details here: https://abz.agency/team-and-careers/. If you want to join our team, contact us at hr@abz.agency

With every day of the war Ukrainian people are becoming stronger. Guys are spending more and more time at work, one of them has even already returned to work in the office. I miss the office too.

Now our company is actively looking for new talented people. Many people have lost their jobs and we have a job to offer them. But the same high standards apply, first new guys still have to go through a 2-month internship, study the company's regulations, learn how to work in a team and, of course, study technologies.

If you want to join our team, contact us at hr@abz.agency

One of the best ways to fight stress and cope with harsh reality is to keep yourself busy. Many guys now voluntarily propose to work on weekends to distract themselves from thinking about what is happening around. Some dedicate this time to helping family, friends and people around. Others just rest and continue on Monday refreshed. Everyone is unique and we do our best to understand each other during these hard times.

In the meantime, our HR, CTO and CEO is as busy as always doing interviews to hire new guys. Many have lost their jobs due to other companies and agencies closing, so we feel that we can step up and provide jobs.

Loving your country is not just words! These are actions, do what you can do best for the country. We know how to work hard and we will work.

© photo our CEO took while traveling around the country of Ukraine 🇺🇦 in 2019

We continue to work in Ukraine. All our guys are now working remotely from safe locations. Some of the guys stayed in Kyiv, some went to other cities of western Ukraine (Rivne, Lviv, Chernivtsi, Ternopil). But we continue to work.

We receive a lot of words of support and desire to help us and our country. You can help us continue our work. Guys, when they are busy with work, can think positively, stay calm and instill confidence in their families. Work allows our company to continue paying wages, taxes in Ukraine and remain solvent citizens of our country.

Support Ukraine not with words, but with deeds. Let’s work together on new projects. Give us this opportunity. This will be the best and real help for us.

Work for us today is a guarantee of stability for tomorrow.

We are working! And we have always worked no matter the situation in 2014 and now. Our team works remotely to stay safe and continue developing our projects. Thank you to all the clients who work with us!

We remain a reliable outsourcing partner. We do our best.

Recently we officially registered our own trademark and received a certificate! Now, each of our logos will show off the ® mark.

Everything is calm and usual in Ukraine. There is no war. Kiev lives its usual life. Construction of high-rise buildings continues as scheduled, the roads are full of cars and planes are still in the sky. People discuss how they spent their St. Valentine's Day with their loved ones and the sun shines brightly as usual.

When the big guys play their geopolitical games, we just have to wait until they play enough. The media is escalating the situation, but at this time we continue to work as always. If you want to get information about a real situation in Ukraine, ask locals.

We continue to do our best for our clients ;)

We think you may find this interesting. If you have any questions just send us an email to info@abz.agency.

Welcome! We hope you’ll enjoy your brief stay.

We decided to tour you around our brand new Kiev office and make the video in retro style 📽

Also, twice a day, we use UV lamps to sterilize all premises (including a warehouse and a toilet) for 15 minutes during the day and 30 minutes at night.

Our company cares about its people and in return they take care of our customer’s projects.

Is PRD necessary or not?

Let's take a step back and look at our own example outside web development. As you know, our employees work in 3 offices across two cities in Ukraine. Recently we greatly expanded our team and needed more space to fit everyone in, so in early January we found a new bigger office space which needed a renovation. As everyone in a similar situation we encountered questions of the deadline and estimate for the repairs. You can’t just show the foreman and office manager the premises, tell them what you want and expect to receive a deadline and estimate right away.

Therefore we extended the same principles that we apply to every project and took it upon ourselves to develop a detailed 3D model of the new office in SketchUp. We thought of every little thing up to every lightswitch, camera, even all the posters on the wall and their prints. Then we prepared a complete and detailed document where we described all the work that needs to be done, provided the screenshots with precise technical measurements of what and where should be installed. We also made a list of all furniture, equipment and materials necessary for the new office. Painstakingly described every small detail like wall color, furniture color, location of cameras, lighting fixtures, antibacterial lamps, alarms, electronic locks, etc. Once we made sure that we covered everything we sent all the information for estimation. And when we met with the foreman and furniture maker in the premises, they provided us with a full estimate, a repair plan and a deadline in a couple of days. They guaranteed an accuracy within +/-10-30% which is not far from our own WPE.

As the real practice of successful projects shows, everything should start with PRD and the same principles apply to any project regardless of area.

New Year's eve is a time for presents 🎁

Each year we give all employees a paid week off for the New Year's holidays. During this time, the entire company is closed, the offices are quiet and all work chats freeze. Guys have an opportunity to relax and reset, so we can return fresh in a new year.

And also as a New Year's gift we will buy neck massagers to all of the offices, so that everyone can stretch their neck for 5-7 minutes during the day. Improved blood flow and relaxation will help guys to focus on the task even more and improve efficiency once they return to the workplace.

2021 was end, so we want to look back and reflect on the results. This year there have been many different events, both good and bad. We will forget the bad ones, but the lessons that we have learned from them will stay in our company's regulations (both organizational and technical) as always. We and our clients will remember everything that was good with a smile and joy in our eyes. Let’s also look into the future and set our plans for the new 2022.

Happy New Year, everyone!

This week we had an office shoot for a new short promotional video about our company. It was a fun and refreshing experience for everyone involved. The videographer came with a camera and we helped him choose the best angles and scenes which will better represent us. It was an unusual change of pace to think about the best way to film everything.

The videographer spent most of the day in the office with us, but it was not disruptive and guys were continuing their work on the projects as usual. Please look forward to seeing the result in the future!

This week the guys got together to play volleyball again. It is always helpful to unload after work and be active to keep yourself in top condition. As always we were fully engrossed in the game thinking about serves, passes and game dynamics. The guys were very competitive as always and fully embraced the spirit of competition.

After that, the guys laid out hot pizza boxes right on benches in the gym. Next day, everyone actively shared their impressions at work during the break.

We are active at work the same as we are active afterwards. We look forward to sharing some of our energy, so do not hesitate to contact us if you want to work with us and see for yourself.

Our team is constantly expanding and welcoming new faces. The company arranges 2 months of intense internship for every new employee, teaching them the most advanced technologies and approaches.

An internship is a very important stage in the employee’s growth. At this stage newcomers learn to be an integral part of the team and part of the company. Learn to communicate correctly and constantly acquire new knowledge from books. Also during this stage every employee starts their advanced English language course with our professional teacher.

Each week, management receives a report from the team about the trainee's development success to adjust the internship plan.

After the internship, each employee continues growth according to their Individual Development Plan, we always keep improving and never let complacency set in.

Contact hr@abz.agency to join us!

Guys from the Kiev office decided to shoot some paint at each other after work. We chose to capture the flag as our “game mode” to make things interesting and sent 8000 paintballs at each other. It was fun as always! The only issue was that it got dark too quickly. We just stopped seeing where to shoot and decided to wrap up.

The next day, all the guys were as always in the office at 8 am on schedule and got on to work with refreshed motivation. We need to do our best for our clients, projects will not develop themselves. Therefore, our guys make sure to always be fresh and full of energy.

Do you want to see for yourself? If you have an interesting web project, just contact us and we will make it on time and with the required quality.

We bought another batch of MacBooks Pro on the Apple M1 platform, because the guys liked the performance. These MacBooks will be directed to primarily upgrade the hardware of dedicated teams.

In addition to teams working on an hourly basis, we have several dedicated teams (4-8 guys in each) who work full-time on specific projects as a direct extension of the client's team. At the same time, all the principles and regulations of our company are applied equally to all employees and clients of our company.

By extending our principles and regulations equally to all of our projects we ensure that we consistently provide quality outsourcing services for custom web solutions, browser extensions and web site development.

On November 8, our company will be 16 years old!!! We are as always hard focused on our main goal: to provide web development outsourcing services on time and with the required quality. During this time, we have successfully developed hundreds of projects for our clients who have been working with us for 3, 6 or even 10 years continuously!

We have our great team of 40 employees who work in our offices across two cities in Ukraine. The company strives all the time to be on the bleeding edge of advanced technologies and raise the expertise of the guys. 75% of all guys are involved in projects constantly and work full time in dedicated teams. The rest are working on new hourly projects. We will continue to further develop our client’s projects, improve the quality of our services and provide better working conditions for the team.

Last week our guys decided to warm up a little after work. We rented a gym and organised a friendly volleyball match. Everyone had a blast, even the photographer who was hit by a stray ball several times 🙂

Lead dev took an initiative and acted as the organiser of this event, which once again confirmed that the leader should always remain the leader both in the office and outside of it.

Our guys always approach things seriously, be it creating a PRD, developing a project or a volleyball match.

This week we welcome a new resident in our office, a 3D-printer. Everyone wanted to see how it’ll work so we decided to try it out right away and print our logo. Please join us and take a look at the result.

We are always fascinated by new technology and never miss an opportunity to build our own understanding and have hands-on experience with it, so when it's time to implement new ideas into our projects we are already one step ahead.

As our CEO says: “Team building does not take place at corporate parties or other events, team building takes place while working on a project in the workplace.” We have the same goal and always watch each other’s backs on the way to the finish line.

Our clients surely notice positive results of this mindset and we are always glad to receive feedback like this: “We're very happy with the work of the team. Yes, they've been really super reactive during our rush to launch our newest version on 1st of October and during Project Manager’s absence on top of it the dev were very communicative; so that was really cool. And I'm very happy that the Project Manager is back, personally I didn't enjoy filling his shoes too much and definitely appreciate what he does.”

We always wanted a huge logo across the wall and now it came true 🙂

But in all seriousness, recently we successfully finished training 6 out of 8 interns from our biggest expansion ever. We feel that we're just getting started, so we are open to new faces.

We need experienced:

• - Back-end developers (PHP Laravel, Node.js);
• - Front-end developers (React.js, Vue.js, React Native);
• - QA specialists (manual and automation testing).

If you are interested in joining our team please contact our hr@abz.agency.

When it comes to starting the development of a website, browser extension or mobile app you are looking for a “first step” to get the project going and commonly the first thing that comes to mind is a visual design. So naturally you find a designer who diligently translates all of your ideas, examples and suggestions to mockups and on the first glance designs look great, but when the time comes to apply them in practice everything falls apart. What went wrong?

You can compare this situation to building a house - you won’t be able to start construction based on a drawing of a house exterior. It takes into account only how it looks from the outside without considering its internal structure and supporting infrastructure and most importantly the drawing does not need to take into consideration any limitations like laws of physics.

The same is true for mockups which were developed without proper planning and comprehensive Discovery Phase which takes both the visual and technical side of the project into consideration to achieve the desired result while keeping all the limitations in mind.

If you are feeling lost you can always consult our articles to get a better understanding of a journey to bringing your idea to life

After working with the guys from the second office in Kiev, we found time to drop by for the presentation of the new E-tron series from Audi and see for ourselves what future brings us in the automotive industry.

While we are on the crest of the wave of web technology innovation all the time, we do not want to also lag behind in other areas of innovation in everyday life. After all, we develop custom solutions for our clients from all the industries and must keep up with all new developments.

One of two Kiev offices has recently moved into a new larger space. The guys were long waiting for the renovation to complete so they could move and enjoy the new loft style office.

The 3D model of the office, interior design and furniture were personally designed by our CEO in a SketchUp in literally 3 days. Then we began the renovation process which we completed with great success. The result speaks for itself: panoramic windows, two large open work spaces, central HVAC, two bathrooms, a large kitchen, two meeting rooms, a recreation room and other facilities.

In the near future we plan to take more photos and even possibly make a video tour. In the meantime, the guys settle in the new office and find their favourite places. It's easy to get used to good things, it feels like everyone was working here all along. We are very pleased with the new office and are happy to share it with you!

The third quarter of this year showed us that it is possible to grow even quicker. We have an unprecedented 8 internships running in parallel including front-end, back-end and QA specialists. To achieve this feat and successfully onboard new members, we had to revise not only the internship plan and update the tasks, but also reconsider the very approach to the internship.

In September and October, interns will complete a 2 month internship (which is mandatory regardless of the previous experience). Once the internship is completed, we will prepare to introduce the guys into real projects and get our output even higher.

Today we mark the seventh anniversary of one of our invaluable team members joining our company. We mark this occasion with gifting an iPad PRO together with our heartfelt gratitude and some words of choice:

• - Thank you for being part of our team for the last 7 years!
• - Please accept our gratitude for all your hard work and your contribution to our success.
• - You grew up together with the company and the company grew up with you, let’s keep pushing and reach new horizons together!

Long term bonds strengthen our company and each day bring us closer to our goals. We continue moving forward as one.

We never stop keeping up with modern technology and updating the hardware in the company. This time we expanded our arsenal with 4 MacBooks Pro 16 (Intel Core i7, 16GB DDR4) and 2 MacBook Pro 13 (Apple M1, 16 GB DDR4) for comparison. Let's see how the new Apple M1 stacks up against Intel under real load on heavy projects.

We also bought a lot of peripherals for 4K monitors, apple mice and keyboards, monitor stands, adapters, and more. We provide everything that is necessary for the team to have every available tool to maximise their productivity and bring even more value to our clients.

Today I’d like to discuss one of the pain points - how you (our clients) sometimes increase the duration and cost of the development. In particular, let’s take the example of the Discovery Phase. Let me remind you that during the Discovery Phase we develop a PRD (Product Requirements Document) in close cooperation with you.

Here are several examples of reasons why you (as our client) increase the duration of the Discovery Phase with your own actions:

1. Discovery Phase is a stage where we build a PRD. It is not just answering the first 20-30 questions, but a full scale development of Project Documentation (Project Structure) and Visual representation (high fidelity wireframes). Many clients are initially confused about this which causes misunderstandings.

2. Clients often get distracted from the main goal of the project and begin wandering in discussions of future versions of the project, potential project’s or company’s success. Unfortunately this takes up the team's time while bringing no result in achieving goals of the current Discovery Phase. Modern custom solutions are built in a way that they can be easily modified according to your future needs, so you need to focus on the present.

3. All UI/UX decisions must be locked in during the wireframing stage and not later when working on mockups! Wireframing stage is specifically dedicated to going through each and every UI/UX question because it reduces the development costs tenfold and saves a lot of development time. It also allows us to give a precise WPE (Work Plan-Estimate) within +/- 20% for the whole project.

4. Project Structure is the most important part of the PRD. It describes each and every feature, from pressing one button to all the validation checks and integrity checks, especially all the negative cases. You need to pay full attention to this part of the PRD and be very prudent, because here you will find everything that will be executed on the server and in the background while being hidden from the eye. In the end, WPE will contain precisely what was described in the Project Structure up to a smallest detail.

There are a lot more reasons to cover and we will likely write a detailed article on this topic in future.

In this crazy hot summer when temperatures climb up to 38 ℃ (100°F) everyone wants to go on a fast ride and feel the fresh air! To get a shot of adrenaline from drifting on a parking lot making crazy exhaust noise while drowning in clouds of tire smoke! And all of this during the lunch break, a pure pleasure to be a part of this team.

We really adhere to the saying “work hard, play hard” and our guys did really well last month!

Sometimes we receive suggestions from our potential clients to quickly build an MVP using no-code app development tools or templates. Let’s discuss this topic and share some information for you to consider when choosing to pursue this option.

No-code tools sacrifice a lot of freedom and features to be as simple as they are, also while being promoted as a new solution for your business they share the same problems with any low level solution like CMS or template.

You will be limited by available templates and building blocks which will little by little skew the MVP away from your initial idea and influence the user feedback that you receive. Essentially you will receive feedback for the template and not your actual idea. The website will look and feel generic which will erode the trust of potential users and as a result negatively impact MVP’s ability to attract potential customers which is absolutely important at this stage.

All these factors may cause significant underperformance of your MVP which may lead to wrong conclusions which will kill otherwise promising ideas. This is why we always advise our clients that MVP that seeks to get user feedback must be custom built with an intent to provide service as intended from the get go, albeit with a limited feature set.

When starting a new project it can be tempting to save costs by combining multiple development roles into a single freelancer. You can even try to justify this approach by saying that it cuts down time on communication within the team and onboarding.

However, as everyone knows jack of all trades is master of none. At best, you receive a mediocre result in all parts of your project and at worst you get a lot of critical oversights which could have been easily prevented. You are essentially stacking all potential points of failure in a single person which is never a good idea regardless of their experience or skills.

This is exactly why we as an agency ensure that every specialist has deep expertise in their field and focuses specifically on their tasks while having solid knowledge of other areas to see a bigger picture. Specialisation and distribution of tasks are the main drivers of progress in all areas since the industrial revolution and web development is certainly not different.

This week our sales team had a great opportunity to hear from our CEO firsthand how our development team manages to operate in a way that delivers value every single day.

Our whole operation as a company is built upon principles borrowed from industrial manufacturing - all the processes are organised similarly to a conveyer belt that never stops. Everything happens in a very specific rhythm and everyone operates according to their written regulations to consistently deliver the product on time and up to spec. When we say that you receive tangible results every day we mean it literally and our clients are always pleasantly surprised when they realise it once the project starts.

Sometimes it is difficult to give our potential clients a proper taste of this approach beforehand, so we set a goal to work on a content which allows anyone who is interested to get a better understanding before diving in. Please look forward to this content in the future!

On this summer Friday evening guys from the our office got together to spend several happy hours on a karting track together. The fastest ones got to the finish line and everyone else got a truckload of adrenaline and positive emotions.

When everyone has had a good rest, they will tackle the challenges twice as hard next week.

Yes, while hosting an offline IT conference iForum 2021 in Kiev (Ukraine) may still sound outlandish considering the pandemic all the necessary precautions were taken. The event was limited to 5,000 participants (previously in 2019 there were almost 15,000 participants) and was held in the vast open space of the NSC "Olimpiyskiy" stadium.

If you ask us to share our opinion on the event, we can say that this event was great. While there were moments that we might not have liked, but you forgive everything when you are hungry for interaction and you can see people face to face again to feel their passion for the industry directly.

Most of the hot discussed topics were aound startups. The quarantine allowed everyone to reset and think again about fundamental things which lerd to resurgence of topics connected to the real sector such as product delivery, logistics, medicine and smart devices. Of course, there was also a lot of attention to the trending topics of blockchain, NFT and gaming.

We are waiting for new big events to visit and participate!

This summer is as hot as ever, so we decided to improve the office climate with additional AC units with diffusers and we haven’t missed an opportunity to brand them with our signature pattern.

Now when everyone is cool and comfortable, we can focus on our tasks. Feeling of comfort is an absolutely crucial element to achieving the state of flow and maintaining it for maximum productivity.

Our ranks are expanded with a new generation. The whole team congratulates a new dad on the birth of his beautiful girl! A special gift from the company is a diaper cake, a day off and of course, a special merch from the company. We wish her to grow up as a healthy, smart and beautiful girl.

What could be better for guys than to play with a powerful toy during a lunch break and drift in circles on a parking lot. This beauty accelerates from 0 to 100 km/h in 5.5 sec (310 hp) and it's also convertible which makes for a breezy experience in summer. As Jeremy Clarkson says: “This is what makes me smile.”

The guys enjoyed it a lot. We were charged with positive energy and adrenaline before getting back to our tasks while the car went to another office to amuse the guys there.

In our agency we pay special attention to the security of our clients. Here are some of main best practices that we maintain:

• ✅ We configure AWS and Digital Ocean VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) according to all the industry best practices and recommendations.
• ✅ We always use LTS (Long Term Support) versions of all the frameworks which ensures at least 3 years of continuous security updates.
• ✅ Security is one of the main reasons why we avoid widely used CMS (Content Management Systems) like Wordpress or Magento. It is common for them to encounter security breaches almost every day between the CMS itself and numerous plugins which need to be constantly patched to achieve any semblance of protection.
• ✅ We follow detailed internal regulations among our employees to minimise risks of unintentional information leaks and social engineering attacks.
• ✅ Internally we utilise only MacOS devices with encrypted hard drives and manage unique passwords for each service using Bitwarden in conjunction with enabling 2 factor authentication whenever it is available.

This month we’ve made a commitment to host meetups on technology topics. Our CTO was first to open the conversation from an introductory overview of all technologies that we utilise in our work during his speech and encouraged everyone to participate in future meetups and make their voices heard.

We concluded that we should host these meetings semimonthly with participation of all developers and project managers. If someone misses the meeting or wants a refresher a full recording will be always available in company G Suite cloud storage.

Strong communication and exchange of ideas is absolutely crucial for steady development of our collective expertise and boosts individual progress of each participant. This is exactly why we also roll our similar initiatives on a smaller scale on other parts of our company like the sales department.

Our client managers will be glad to share our thoughts with you too and discuss your ideas if you contact us via email info@abz.agency.

We always make sure that our offices are stocked with everything necessary for the team to stay on target while taking their coffee or tea breaks to refresh and supply their brains with fuel.

Each of us has a favourite coffee brew or tea variety in the office. Recently we ordered our own branded disposable cups, so now everyone can take their favourite tea or coffee from the office to drink conveniently on the way home.

Everyone is welcome to grab a cup!

The spring has brought sunny weather to Kyiv and one of our offices got together on an off road adventure. The stars of the show are SHERPs - Ukrainian amphibian cars that can ride anywhere and where they can’t ride they will swim.

Everyone got their dose of adrenaline and impressions. Now we are waiting for what ideas will come up in other offices!

We have implemented a policy of keeping all client interactions in text more than 8 years ago and have never looked back. While it can cause some friction in the initial stages of our negotiation, this approach certainly proves itself invaluable for clarity, efficiency and transparency of our communication with our clients.

Recently we were pleased to notice that our approach becomes a very common piece of advice among authors of business and productivity literature. We completely agree with and support this cultural shift which came as a result of a full year of global transition to remote work. More people notice that a lot more work can be done in the same amount of time when you are not bogged down in endless video conference calls or arguing over details that were discussed without being written down.

Work with us and you will pick up a lot more small details which we implemented into our day-to-day operation from our rich experience of working remotely and be ahead of the curve!

One of our main goals is to build mutually beneficial long term relationships with our clients. In practice this means that for many clients we encounter situations where it is not sustainable either for us or for a client to move forward with the project and this is completely normal.

Not starting the project too hastily before reiterating all the key points that were initially discussed while making sure that there’s no misunderstandings and wrong expectations ensures that client will be satisfied with further collaboration even if we may seem overly cautious. The truth is that the human mind has a tendency to simplify and gloss over very important details which later come as surprise and create unnecessary friction.

Our strategy is to be as forward and transparent as possible precisely for the reasons outlined above, but others may not have the same views. We advise you to be cautious and level headed when discussing your potential partnership with any agency and If you are interested in working with us we will be happy to address any of your questions and concerns to make sure that you have a clear understanding of the situation before making a decision.

Maintaining balance in life is always important, so we bought an Ex-Board for each office. Testing how long you can stand on it is a good and healthy way to briefly break up a work session to get the blood flowing. Besides that it’s always fun to see someone make a surprised face when losing balance and try it for yourself 🙂

While everything is closed due to a lockdown, our office is always a welcoming place to come and spend time with colleagues even after hours, so we do our best to maintain a friendly atmosphere. Our goal is to make it a place that guys are glad to visit every day.

Everyone at least once in their life has this moment when you need something done yesterday, but you turn around and nothing is done. There’s a lot of reasons (and everyone has their own reasons) why this may happen in regards to developing a website or browser extension, but I want to warn you against making hasty decisions.

Saying “Slow and steady wins the race” is especially true in case of web development, moving too fast without enough planning and deliberation will only cause a lot of costly problems down the line which will take more time to solve than you initially saved. Both time and money are two main resources that need to be carefully budgeted if you want to achieve the desirable result, so when the question is “How can I deliver it within a week/month?” the right question to ask is “How many resources (both in terms of time and money) are required to achieve my goal and what is available to me currently?”. Based on the answers to these questions you will be able to plan how to either reduce requirements or extend resources which is usually a balancing act.

We will be always happy to help you plan out your project in detail, you can contact us via email info@abz.agency and our client manager will get back to you.

Like kids we are always joyful when getting new hardware toys, especially when they are numerous and powerful. A few MacBooks PRO 16 and new 4K monitors have been purchased in March, so that guys can now work faster and feel more comfortable.

We do our best to minimize development time, even if it looks miniscule, it always has its effect on a bigger scale.

Bad news for clients who want to replicate Amazon or Facebook bearing in mind their brilliant success - Rome wasn't built in a day. The same is true of web-development.

People often set out to create the product that will make them the next Jeff Bezos following the common misconception. The truth is that the long-standing tech giants reached heady success with help of a constant growth and innumerable improvements. For this reason, the desire to reach the same with the flip of a switch, only helps to lose sight of the original product goal, procrastinate away release dates and waste time on expensive bug fixes.

Based on our experience, it is always better in the long run to begin such projects with defining the key scope of features for the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and not make reckless decisions. This approach allows to attract early-adopter customers and validate a product idea early in the product development cycle. Moreover, starting with an MVP will allow you to launch your product ASAP with the fixed set of 'killer features', and of course the possibility to add more functions later, as soon as you get your idea validated.

Our company joins all the congratulations to the beautiful half of humanity on the spring holiday of International Women's Day! We wish you great health and a strong immune system. Live a fulfilled life full of love and positive emotions, blossom and enjoy every bit of it - it's worth it. And you deserve it!

While the common knowledge is that “Client is always right!”, in web-development strictly following this saying usually goes against the best interests of the clients themselves. Consulting is one of the most significant parts of collaboration with our clients and which often involves fixing misconceptions and educating our clients on best and most efficient practices.

Quite commonly this involves acknowledging that the client is not always right and doing our best to steer them in the correct direction even if we encounter friction from their side. We strongly believe in delivering a quality product and value to our customers even if it means sometimes clashing with them over project matters until we find common ground.

Currently there’s a rising opinion among management scientists and psychologists that productive conflict (as opposed to unproductive) is healthy and important for communication. Completely avoiding conflict may cause as much damage as bickering over each and every matter. Honest, straightforward dialogue is the key to most problems in any group effort. In great teams conflict becomes productive.

Continuing the topic of collaboration, let's talk about fixed price. Potential clients quite often come to us asking for fixed price offering and it is easy to understand their rationale - you minimise your risks by setting a predefined number before even starting the project.

However judging from our experience of working with clients who come to us after unsuccessful fixed price projects, in reality everything is not so simple. Every developer worth their salt knows that accurate estimation is not possible without perfect information about project requirements.

Any number given without a deep analysis of client’s needs and goals may be very misleading in the long run, usually this is a cause of many problems like realising that you went over budget when significant financial commitment was already made or encountering unforeseen issues due to the lack of planning.

Companies and freelancers offering fixed prices usually avoid these obstacles by either padding their fixed price with a significant buffer or exclusively working on repetitive unoriginal projects which provide sub par generic results. As you may understand both options are not really great for both sides and still do not guarantee avoiding all possible issues.

Time is universal currency and the most precious resource. In previous posts we talked a lot about the Discovery Phase, but we put a lot of attention to our side of the equation without talking about effort and diligence that our clients show when bringing their ideas to life.

Project's progress heavily depends on the client's participation and input. No one knows their project better than our clients, so usually they spend 1-2 hours during the day in active collaboration with our team during the Discovery phase. While it may be hard to fit such a commitment into your daily timetable this is definitely worth it to be so close to your own product and ensure that it comes out exactly as imagined.

If you are not afraid of the challenge and have an Idea in mind you can contact us via email info@abz.agency and tell us more about your idea.

Also you can read our cycle of articles dedicated to the full lifecycle of the project from an idea to a finished product here.

As the saying goes, one who can not rest, can not work well either. Our team knows how to work, which means they know how to rest well.

Today we had a Pizza day in our team! Why not? The calendar shows mid-February, it is -12 degrees celsius (10 F for our overseas friends) on the street, and outside looks like stills from the film “The Day After Tomorrow”. This winter surely decided to show itself in all its glory and strength, but we know how to raise the mood and boost the dopamine levels in the team.

The recipe is simple. We take the whole Kiev team (we all get together in one of the two offices), order a lot of our favorite pizza, dust off the air hockey, plug in Nitdendo and…. Go! A lot of drive, competition, excitement, emotions and live communication! That’s always a breath of fresh air.

Time flew by and we are already hurrying home in a great mood! Let me share some of the atmosphere with this photo.

We are actively celebrating the coming of February with the team by hitting a couple of strikes in the bowling alley! As we often say here in Ukraine “There's time for business and hour for fun”.

Time sure flies fast! I can't believe that the second month of the year has already begun, it seems just recently New Year's fireworks and "home" corporate parties have just died down. However we think we know why time flies so quickly. It's simple: January was very active! The teams were running on full steam and there was almost no bench time (despite the fact that usually January and February is a low season), let’s knock on wood so everything can continue going smoothly.

But the best out of all of this is that our clients are happy and ready to take on new heights in their ambitions! We plan to continue working under a heavy load of 110-120% going into February while our HR is working on expanding our roster to meet a high demand from our clients.

As the saying goes “Better late than never”. Giving gifts is as much fun as receiving them or even more fun depending on who you ask. Recently a New Year's gift from the guys arrived at one of our offices and everyone was pleased to see a new addition of a table football.

Table football is a great opportunity to relax, but only after work day is over. This is especially relevant during the lockdown period when everything is closed and there is nowhere to go to spend time with the peers after work. This is a gift that everyone can partake in, which means that you can consider it as a gift from everyone to everyone in the office. You may even say that this is a great example of how “win-win philosophy” is a part of our internal culture.

Hard work always pays off. We always do our best to keep our guys motivated and focused on improving by helping them find their long term goals but also giving them something to look forward to in the short term. We have KPI and a quarterly bonus system in place, but when our guys go above and beyond for our clients we can’t just leave it unnoticed.

Recently two of our guys received their brand new iPhones as a surprise quarterly bonus of appreciation for their efforts which was a very pleasant surprise for them.

Guys received a new boost in motivation and are ready to achieve even better results in the future!

Our traditional paid holiday break is over, the entire company was closed from December 26th to January 3rd. It is always great to get the full 3rd week off on New Year’s eve. Guys used this opportunity to spend time with their families, friends and went as far away from city as possible to relax in the countryside or abroad (as far as the lockdown allows).

On the 4th of January, everyone was in their place and ready to pick up where we left off. There’s a lot of work to do, but all the guys are well rested and ready to reach new heights of productivity. In any case, we will continue to strive for the success of our beloved clients' projects as usual.

Santa always comes to those who worked hard all year long 🙂

Recently, a courier arrived at the office with a huge box and a greeting card. You have no idea how nice it is to receive gifts from clients! All the guys immediately ran to check out what’s inside and we quickly got the tree from the warehouse to properly put all the gifts under.

One of the boxes which stayed closed was keeping a great surprise for us! When we opened it up inside was an HDMI Super Nintendo Classic edition with 20+1 golden age 16 bit games. You should have seen the joy on the guys' faces when they found it! They Immediately checked what games were included and how to set it up. Naturally, a test run was scheduled after work 🙂

It does not matter how good a developer you are or what are your skills and how old you are. When Christmas comes everyone is a child deep inside, and all kids love presents!

Thank you so much Jean. We will continue doing our best!

Today we would like to tell you about high-fidelity wireframes and why it is important to have them for your project.

Perhaps each of you has ever painted something or at least can imagine how professional artists produce their paintings. So, the process of creating a painting always starts from making a sketch. Artists put simple shapes, outline objects therefore prepare a foundation for a future masterpiece. The purpose of sketching varies but in simple words - it helps to mould the final artwork.

High-fidelity wireframes serve the same purpose - they help to mould the final structure of each project. Wireframe, by nature, is a static representation of your product. In the world of web and mobile design it is a basic guideline of your web-application for both designers and developers to follow.

Wireframing is a first mandatory step forwards creating great UX and UI experience, they represent every page of a desired application as well as location of elements on them. First and foremost, high-fidelity wireframes allow you, the investor, the development team and other project participants to receive a tactile response of the project. They also help to fill in the real volumes of the upcoming work at an early stage of the project design phase.

We quite often find the copies of our logo and its pattern on the internet. Commonly there are flipped and stretched versions of various kinds, but recently we found the most curious and amusing one. Our logo was used as an Icon on a bluetooth speaker for pairing multiple speakers as a one system.

It is always a flattering experience to be copied by someone, we always consider it a compliment to our work. But using our logo as a button to create a pair of devices is symbolic of our values and made us smile. As a result we bought this speaker for the office 🙂

If our logo makes the devices work together, then it will also bring us together with our clients. Join us and you will receive a full charge of energy. You will make a loud statement with your projects which will be developed with utmost attention to quality and top tier performance. UX tests, which we recently introduced as mandatory, will make your projects even more attractive to potential users.

Click the button to make a first step towards a joint project!

Lately we’ve discussed a lot how we can bring your project Idea to life and help guide you through all the necessary steps to get a result that you had in mind. Today we want to touch on the other important aspect of launching a new project that may be overlooked.

This is one of the main reasons why you shouldn’t cut corners on the quality of your project! Problems with the product itself can waste all the other expenses.

This is our 50th post since we started sharing our thoughts with you! And it feels like it was yesterday when we wrote the first one. I hope that our posts were helpful and insightful to you. Sure, we don't get thousands of likes and reposts, but we have our niche audience of loyal clients. We can say that these posts are intended for the inner circle.

We recently celebrated our company anniversary on November 8th and to mark the occasion we bought air hockey tables for all three offices. You have no idea how fun it was, we are always happy to give gifts to the team and our long term clients. But receiving gifts is as fun as giving. Thanks to all the guys!

P.s. But the play time is only after work 😉.

Last week, on November 8th we celebrated the anniversary of our company (we work since 2005). I would like to say a few words about our guys. Each company consists of people, but we employ only the best. If you talk to each one of them personally, you’ll notice right away they are unique strong personalities. The guys manage to work, develop, learn new technologies and English at the same time while having the time left for their families and children.

I would like to separately thank each and every one of our guys for learning to be proactive and to do their job in the office with a high quality. For trying to always stay in touch even after hours, answering questions from our clients and working with them sometimes as reverently as with their own children.

We wish you to live and prosper too.

November 8 is the abz agency's birthday. Long ago in 2005 the first office of the company was opened. First keystrokes, first lines of code, first PSD mockups… time flies fast and now it’s 2020. During these years, our company survived the 2008 and 2012 crises, 2014 which was the most difficult year of the war for Ukraine. And we prosper to this day

At the moment, we have 2 offices in Kiev which house 35+ employees. Nowadays we focus solely on working with foreign clients from Israel, USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland and many other countries. Over the past 4 years, the company has firmly established itself in the market of design (PRD), development and maintenance of custom web applications, websites and browser extensions. Currently the main focus of the company is the development of complex web based management systems. We employ the technical stack including PHP Laravel, node.js, react.js, vue.js, Angular.js and cloud hostings based on AWS, DigitalOcean, Heroku.

We grow and develop, while preserving the authenticity and qualities of a small company, which our clients value as much in us. Detailed approach in the form of a PRD, delivery of each project on time, clear and honest estimate with accuracy of +/- 20% and a piece of soul in every project.

In one of the offices of our company, a team member warned us that his test for COVID-19 was positive. We immediately sent all of the employees home and made sure to deliver all the necessary equipment to their homes so they can continue their work. The next day, the company paid for the full test package for all of our employees and waited for the test results. Based on the results we split everyone into three groups: healthy, carriers and sick. The good news is that almost everyone turned out to be either healthy or carriers.

All offices are being completely disinfected twice a day (15 minutes during the day and 30 minutes at night). After a few days, everyone who was categorised as healthy returned to the office. The rest remained in self-isolation to work at home. We will wait for 2 weeks and then repeat the full test again at the full expense of the company.

We wish you all to be healthy! The rest will come later.

We heard many times from our clients that they were duped by their previous team and left with an unfinished project or the project that is just so bad that it’s nothing like they imagined. Does this sound familiar to you?

This is exactly why our company has chosen a more honest but difficult approach to always aim for the best results. We always develop the project strictly in accordance with a PRD (detailed technical description of the project) and HF WF (high fidelity wireframes) without any compromises on quality and deadlines. I'll tell you it's tough, the team is always working to the limit of their capabilities. There are always crackling sparks of labor energy in the office.

And you know what? Many of our clients have been working with us for 3-5 and even 7 years. And our guys have been working with us for 2-6 and up to 11 years. Our guys love doing challenging projects to improve even further and our clients love receiving good quality solutions right on time.

Is everything always so smooth and perfect? No, not always. We make mistakes too, but we always do our best to admit them and make everything right. There are cases when clients can be dishonest and try to scam us, in these cases we let them go.

This is how we work, we invite you to try it out too. You'll like it!

It is very common for people outside the industry to complicate things that can be done within 15 minutes while underestimating complexity of some features thinking that something which takes 2-3 weeks will take only 15 minutes. I think that this is common in any industry, but only in IT the client is eagerly ready to object to high estimations when he thinks that everything can be done quickly.

For example, a client will never object that replacing pistons in a car engine is a labor-intensive process which takes 3-5 days instead of 15 minutes. Or when it is necessary, for example, to make a storm drain or a ground loop with lightning protection, an ordinary person often does not even think about these architectural details, but at the same time, they will agree that this task also needs 1-2 weeks of work.

If you are negotiating with a company or developer, do not hesitate to ask open ended questions to get detailed answers. It is worth delving deeper into the issue to understand how much time and effort is actually required to implement certain functionality or features.

Those who work well always know how to kick back and relax. When playing paintball the team split between two camps: black and white. But in the end there were no losers in the game, friendship won the quest!

We try to work as hard as possible on weekdays, so we can have a great time on weekends without any worries. To achieve this, we utilise various planning approaches and productivity techniques. For example, when developing a project from scratch, Scrum methodology is more appropriate, however for the maintenance stage of project lifecycle or continuing development of an already launched project, Kanban methodology suits more.

Regardless of the methodology that we have chosen, careful preparation is the key to success. This is exactly why our project managers strictly adhere to our detailed company regulations. They always pay special attention to maintaining project documentation and keeping it up to date. This approach is the key to our success in any project.

Imagine that your project has a good detailed PRD (Product Requirements Document) - in a nutshell, this is a combination of a complete technical description of the project and High-fidelity wireframes. Now you have started development and suddenly you need to add a new project participant (assistant, project manager, product owner etc.) to the project from your side (as a client) or you want to speed the project up by adding another team.

You have been working for over a year with the current development team, so you understand each other. But the new team members are not on the same page. Why does this happen?

Even in simple projects, often with a long history of communication, a single conceptual apparatus is developed, so to speak. In simple words, all participants are well aware of the specifics of the project. This is not about technical or industry slang, which are also important, it’s about a set of concepts specifically related to the project itself.

To avoid problems like this we recommend dedicating a specific section of PRD for the new participant onboarding process. In this section, you can describe all the terms, features, best practices and everything that can help to get a new participant up to speed.

Who works hard, plays hard - we always keep this principle. One of our internal teams recently had an interesting party. The guys took turns at the wheel of the БРДМ2 (Combat Reconnaissance Patrol Vehicle). Guys had a great time outdoors as they sailed along the banks of the Dnieper river.

What's next, riding a tank or construction vehicle? Time will show. But this will already be in the next summer season. In the coming winter, we will choose something in a more cosy setting.

Work with us. We work fast and clean, so we have plenty of time to rest!

Working with an old project like one that we described above will turn out to be much more expensive than expected. In some cases it is even cheaper to make the whole project or some modules from scratch using modern technologies. Another huge problem is that it is virtually impossible to meet modern industry requirements and standards of performance in the project using old technologies.

We recommend all our clients to ask their development team to conduct a code review every six months on current projects, the main goal is to check the relevance of technical documentation and update the versions of main technologies used in the project to the latest versions.

Time to make the chimi-f***ing-changas!

We congratulate all IT professionals with our professional holiday on the 256th day of the year and wish you healthy eyes, strong immunity, interesting projects and great clients. Live long and prosper!

In all seriousness, happy Day of the Programmer to everyone related!

When developing a PRD (Product Requirements Document) , we immediately take into account the above requirements and industry standards. Our recommendation is to be wary of any developer company that is not aware of the latest industry standards, does not warn you about the need to start with PRD and develop technical documentation for the project in conjunction with HF WF (High Fidelity Wireframes) and mockups.

Time flies. Technologies come and go faster than new startups show up. Projects start and finish. But our strong relationships with our clients stay constant throughout many years, due to our stable and consistent approach which stands the test of time.

We want to give a special thanks to our clients who keep their business relationships with us for 3, 5 and even 7 and more. Our clients grow and we grow alongside them, we mature as a company and become even more accountable than before. We accumulate more expertise which we are more than happy to share with our clients.

Join the ranks of our clients, we have always been on-line since 2005 and plan to keep this track record, but only during our hours 🙂.

People say that the best way to get good employees is nurture them yourself 🙂. Over the years, our company has introduced a mandatory two-month internship for new team members. It doesn't matter what experience or skills our future team members have when they join us, you still need to complete the internship.

During the internship, each new team member first of all studies the company rules and regulations. We have well thought out and detailed regulations on writing reports, self testing and working with the QA team, working in a team, technical regulations, standards, best practices, development methodologies and other regulations.

An internship involves working on a certain number of specially developed tasks. The purpose of the tasks is to allow the trainee to study the necessary theoretical frameworks and immediately apply this knowledge in practice.

The internship takes place under conditions close to the actual work environment. The internship project involves a full team: PM (project manager), QA, a code review from technical lead and a designer (if necessary).

We take everything into our own hands by teaching, developing and raising our own specialists.

Today we want to talk yet again about the importance of the Discovery phase and why needed PRD (Product Requirements Document).

Imagine that you are building a house and the first thing you start with is a roof, then you move on to walls while thinking that you should lay the foundation later. Suddenly you also remember about pipelines and communications and sporadically start digging trenches for them. It sounds rather absurd, doesn't it?

Obviously, building and house starts from the architect and master plan. The architect will visualise how the house should look from the outside and inside. Master plan will describe all the standards, building materials, specifications and infrastructure. And only after approval of all can you get a final estimate and begin.

The same goes for web development. We need high fidelity wireframes to show you how the frontend part of your website will look like and how the admin panel will work. Technical description of the project is necessary to describe every user interaction and how it works server side. It should also describe all background processes, server infrastructure, specifications and best practices. All the notifications and admin panel should be taken into account too. This list can go on for very long. And all this details are the PRD.

And same as in the analogy, when you have a PRD you can get an accurate quote from any developer. You can read more on our website: Discovery Phase.

Lately we decided to make a small internal refurbishment in one of our offices. When we discussed how we should decorate walls we decided to pay a tribute to the great artist, designer and futurist of our time Syd Mead. His vision inspires our team and we can discuss his works for hours, he really is "the artist who illustrates the future".

You can marvel at his work for hours and hours thinking about infinite possibilities that the future holds. Now employees can stroll around the office and enjoy his work. The depth of thought, the palette, which the author limits to the minimum of colors, intentionally creates restrictions that spur the creative thought.

We ensure that our team is surrounded and inspired by the works of the best, so they see the possibilities of endless improvement and strive every day to be better than yesterday!

Despite the summer heat our BDM managed to make the best out of relaxed quarantine measures and gathered a small group of guys from one of our departments to have some active fun outside. This time it was a off-road quad bike rally, everyone had a lot of fun. We’ll make this a recurring event for sure!

We manage to build strong connections of friendship and teamwork in the office when working on the projects for our amazing clients, so when we go out together it’s just for the sake of entertainment and active lifestyle.

We keep to the saying “Work hard, play hard”. Our guys work on the projects for 40 to 45 hours a week, and even up to 56 hours in case of ASAP situations. Everyone’s satisfied because hard work is always rewarded, all extra hours are paid and we have a quarterly bonus system based on KPI in place to motivate the best among us.

We are always happy to tackle new interesting and challenging projects and eagerly wait to see us among our clients.

It’s sometimes easy to lose track of importance for soft skills while being heavily mentally invested in the IT industry, that’s why we have our best friends to remind us - our books.

We used to have a digital-only book library in our company, but lately we decided to expand to printed copies because they just feel much better. In the near future we plan to buy more than 60 bestsellers.

When you dedicate just 15-30 minutes to reading every day you can read around 1-2 books a month - this will be a huge investment into your own development in the long term! That’s why we invest heavily in developing not only hard skills in our team but soft skills too. It always pays back.

All around the world countries begin to slowly relax quarantine limitations. Summer has come and everyone just wants to rush outside. Some of our guys are already planning their vacations. But even in this case we never forget that work comes first.

We hope that your business is as good as ever! We are always open for cooperation, just share your ideas with us and we’ll help you develop it into a PRD (Product Requirements Document) In our Discovery Phase.

PRD (Product Requirements Document) is the great point to start your project, it should contain all necessary technical documentation and high fidelity wireframes (simplified black and white representations of UI).

1. Technical documentation should contain: project brief, description of business logic, project structure which describes each page and each user interaction in detail, user type and role descriptions, notifications admin panel, background processes, server infrastructure and tech stack.

2. High fidelity wireframes both for desktop and mobile (if necessary) should describe each screen of user interaction in detail.

From description it may seem overwhelming, but we will be happy to guide you through the process from start to finish and answer all the questions that you may have along the way!

You can read more at Discovery Phase.

In the near future Google is planning to update their search engine in a way that leans even more towards user experience (Source).

This means that loading speed will be even more essential than before. Website quality and search rating will be based on a new tool: Core Web Vitals which is going to be added to Google Lighthouse. You can already check if your website fits new standards using Web Vitals Extension.

Even now you can feel that changes are starting to be implemented with the update 6.0.0 to Google Pagespeed Insights. we advise you to recheck your website to see if your grades suffered.

If you encountered any problems or your website speed evaluation deteriorated, our team at abz.agency will be happy to consult you on how to get them back up.

Have you ever thought about doing regression testing on your live website?

Regression testing is running your website through all QA checklists and test cases, in a nutshell it is a full testing of your website. Generally, the more often regression testing occurs, the more issues can be discovered and resolved. If you continuously add new features to your live website, we advise you to do regression testing at least once a month.

If your project is live, but you are not adding any significant changes or new features you can consider regression testing as a visit to the dentist for yourself or regular maintenance for your car. A good preventive measure to perform once every 6 months, so any unnoticed problem won’t go out of hand. There are some problems that can crop up even without making any changes: search engines can change their evaluation standards (Example) and lower your rank, new browser updates and new standards can cause problems etc. In some cases, update or discontinuation of support of some libraries and REST API can outright break some website modules.

If you need any help or have any questions you are welcome to contact us at abz.agency!