Weekly news

This year we want to give our early congratulations for the coming Holidays! 🎄🎄🎄 We know that everyone wants to spend these days with their family and loved ones, so we took an opportunity to make this post earlier so more people will see it. We hope all of you have a safe and relaxing holiday season.

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 guy, teaching them the most advanced technologies and approaches. During the internship we work in 3 directions: - Study all detailed internal company regulations (3 organizational and 4 technical).
- Learn to work in a team and adjust in a new collective. During the internship, each trainee performs training tasks as part of a team including Project Manager, QA specialist and a mentor who checks the quality of the work performed.
- Studying theory and constantly applying it in practice. All the tasks that are performed at the internship stage are applicable to each of our major projects. An internship is a very important stage in the guy’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 guy 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 guy 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 Kyiv 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.

Google updated Pagespeed Insights to a new version which incorporates the newest revision of Lighthouse and new UI. Even now we can already feel the impact of the changes which were implemented with the Lighthouse 9.0.0 update in some areas. We advise you to recheck your websites 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.

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 guys 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 guys 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 Kyiv, 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 Kyiv 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 Kyiv (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 guys 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 Kyiv 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!

With the coming of 2021 the time has come for us to look back on 2020 while building our plans for the year ahead. As a tradition we do this publicly by updating a dedicated page on our website where we keep track of our achievements for previous years and goals for the present year. You can browse our full timeline here. As everyone knows, 2020 wasn’t an easy one for anyone, but we managed to overcome all the challenges that this year presented for us and took this as an opportunity to improve even more by strengthening our very foundation in a form of significant improvements to our internal regulations, processes and investing in new hardware for our team. We also paid special attention to further development of each and every member of our team and made a huge leap in our sales department growth. Looking into 2021 we will continue on the same path of building bridges to our clients by paying special attention to the growth and improvement of our sales department. At the same time we will continue what we started last year further developing our internal regulations and improving our hardware infrastructure while ensuring that each one of us has all that is necessary to grow and develop even further.

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.