Who we are_

First of all, congrats. Getting hell-bent on your original idea is a sure way to fail on the market. You should welcome any changes to your idea and look for innovative approaches to how you can succeed.

To do this, test your assumptions. Relearn everything you know about your product in a series of iterative releases. Our process at nomtek explicitly expects you to be nimble. We’ll build a series of small implementations that test your product’s most important assumptions with real users.

By using user research and metrics, you’ll rewrite your blueprint many times before you hit the mark and deliver the optimal product your users need. The paradigm of Lean Startup describes that very well. You pivot your product until you reach the optimal value and before you run out of resources.

Product quality depends on many variables that have to be aligned to yield results.

First off, our developers don’t work in silos that diminish productivity and the immeasurable value of collaboration. Instead, we favor collaborative design, pair programming, quality assistance (where the tester is involved in discussing assumptions with the product owner and devs, not just testing).

Next, the dev team is immersed in the project context and understands the end goal (the developer knows who the users are and knows what they need). This way, they can empathize with users instead of just coding without context.

We have a sophisticated refinement process that involves lots of discussion on implementation tactics. This helps us build a digital product that reflects user needs.

We’ve got robust quality “filters” in place, which include code review, design review, manual testing, automated testing, and unit tests in the code. Thorough testing lets us significantly decrease bugs, improve functionality, and fix performance.

Our team has extensive experience in building mobile apps. We know all the edge cases. Remember, mobile app development is different from web development (e.g., mobile app runtime environment is Android or iOS, with many versions thereof. Web apps run in browsers, one environment — a lot simpler). Experience is key to building great products.

That said, at nomtek, we rely heavily on the experience of senior developers, best practice sharing between developers during community meetings (e.g., all Android developers meet once a week), determining internal guidelines and principles for building architecture and code, etc.

End-to-End Product Development

We support you throughout the product’s lifecycle:

1. During the initial ideation stages, we provide coaching from our product managers and designers.
2. We have mobile developers and cross-platform developers to build and maintain your product. 
3. We have an internal team of quality engineers to check the app across a variety of benchmarks.

Web Development

We don’t usually involve in pure web development but rather provide all the necessary pieces of the puzzle for a mobile app.

That said, we can build your mobile product’s backend from scratch as well as provide you with a web CMS. A web-based CMS will let you seamlessly update content across your mobile iOS and Android applications.

We build an ecosystem where the mobile app remains a centerpiece. 

Backend development technologies:

• Ruby on Rails
• node.js
• Golang

Frontend web development technologies:

• React.js

It depends on how validated your idea is. Let’s take a look at three scenarios.

1. Say you’ve already validated your idea and can provide us with wireframes. We then take the wireframes and create 20 app screens out of them. With those 20 screens, we can take your product for initial feedback from users.
2. We can also release your product for testing after developing a clickable prototype in, e.g., Figma.

In those two scenarios, no coding whatsoever is involved.

3. For some in-depth testing and feedback, an MVP would be handy. But an MVP doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just enough to test whether the app will pick up with your target audiences. So an MVP for an ecommerce app could have just one feature. For example, customers can purchase a product using one payment method. As the app gains traction, we can add more features like different payment methods, product management, advanced product filtering options, etc.

Developing an MVP should take around three months. Once complete, the MVP can be released to early users for feedback. The feedback will help prepare metrics and assumptions for further development.

Discovery workshops are the first stop. We meet together to discuss your business, needs, goals, and strategy. We try to gather as much information on your project to be able to figure out actionable strategies for the development of your digital product. The goal is to gain a better understanding of your vision to build a foundation for our future cooperation.

We’ll also look at one important question — whether you really need a mobile app. Truth is, not all business types and companies will benefit from a mobile app. Our in-house product managers can coach you into the best strategies after analyzing your case and business model. The product roadmap created during discovery workshops will be tailor-made for you.

At nomtek, honesty and transparency dominate our mindset — if you don’t need an app, we won’t be the ones telling you to invest in something your business doesn’t need.

Depending on app complexity, it can take anywhere from three months to a year to develop an app. 

Here are two good benchmarks to keep in mind in terms of mobile app development time.

A minimum viable product (MVP) should take around three months to complete for each platform (iOS and Android). Then there’s an MVP revision, which shouldn’t take more than another three months. If the process stretches in time, someone is pulling your leg.

Also, to be up to date with how your product looks like and the progress being done, you should receive a working demo of the product every two weeks.

Two-week releases increase transparency between you and the contractor. They also give plenty of time and room for suggesting changes.

We do both.

When you come to us because your in-house devs have tight schedules, we’ll take care of pure development work to let them continue extending your product with new features, without them worrying about the backlog.

On the other hand, we have extensive experience in product validation. We can help you analyze your idea and decide whether it has a chance to fly on the market. If it has a chance, then we’ll advise on what to include in it to make it great. If it doesn’t have a chance, we’ll help you analyze what can be done to improve the idea.

When we start building your product, our team uses analytics and user research to make data-based decisions on features and design. This way, we can test our assumptions with real-life usage data, without making unvalidated predictions.

An MVP is key to creating innovative products. The MVP gives you a chance to learn about user needs, the market, and technical limitations.

When you build the MVP, you can release it quickly and start gathering valuable data. This data helps us make the right product design decisions and hone your competitive edge.

That’s why software development should support frequent releases of improved product versions. Doing the opposite, i.e., releasing a complete piece of software with all features implemented, can be a waste of resources. When building a product without user feedback, it’s very difficult to accurately estimate the necessary features. As a result, more than half of the features may not meet user needs.

An MVP helps validate the most important business assumptions and hypotheses before investing significant funds into a full-fledged version of a product. This way, you increase your chances of success while minimizing financial investment.

First, let’s review how a new feature is added to an app.

The creation of every new feature is based on the belief that the business assumption for its creation is correct.

But measuring whether the implementation was a good choice is possible only after the feature has been launched and the users start using it.

So, to use analytics the right way, we should define metrics and our expected results before the app hits the market. If the assumption is incorrect and analytics show it, we won’t bend data to our favor but instead draw proper conclusions as to the next steps. 

If the developers working on a new functionality already know what kind of analytics they should implement, it makes it easier for them to build a suitable architecture that speeds up development.

Sometimes the implementation cost of certain features might be high. In such cases, you have to consider cost vs. value. These considerations should take place before working on a new feature, to optimize the allocation of the budget.

Remote work has always been in nomtek’s DNA. We have practices in place to make sure everything is well orchestrated. This is backed by our over 10-year experience in remote work.

nomtek’s communication framework:

Our Scrum’ish process provides you with necessary touchpoints with the team every 2 weeks.

During the kickoff, we can set up an additional touchpoint routine that suits your company’s schedule and fits your requirements for how often we need to interact. This way, we can track the communication diligently and decide later on whether the practices need any tweaking.

We are available for regular calls via Zoom and async communication on Slack.

All work that’s happening is transparent at all times — a quick look at the Jira board lets you know who is working on what and what’s the current status.

To have a single point of contact, you can also hire one of our product and project managers. A PM will help you stay in the loop and ensure the communication process is streamlined and nothing gets lost.

That said, we make sure your team is committed to a single project only. This approach helps you know your team members better. Plus, you can interact with devs individually, on a day-to-day basis.

While we favor a remote-first mindset, an in-person meeting is a good start of a fruitful collaboration. We often commence projects by having some face-to-face time in the early days of the project, either by having the customer over at our premises or paying them a visit. Besides, there are project stages where in-person meetings are highly valuable, e.g., prototypes, discovery workshops.

A senior developer at nomtek is a skilled software craftsman, who understands the greater context of a project and oversees regular developers during development. 

Senior developers are inherently curious about the workings of software. They delve into projects and identify possible issues holistically, with a highly analytical mindset.

Seniority goes beyond the simple experience measured in years spent coding. Seniority means the development of code that is refined, scalable, and easy to maintain. Such sophistication in skills requires not only time but also the drive to make beautiful software.

A cross-platform mobile application works on iOS and Android. The development of a cross-platform mobile app is a cost-effective approach that results in robust apps.

Today’s cross-platform mobile development technologies are capable of bringing truly native experiences to apps, with only a handful of tradeoffs.

At nomtek, we build cross-platform mobile apps in Flutter and React Native.

Read more about cross-platform mobile development in our article.

The answer depends on many variables, so before making that decision, consider your budget, app features, app complexity, and audience. 

Native Apps

Great performance and tooling support. Clear, long-term upgrade path to new OS releases. Might be costly to develop and requires two dev teams if you’re building for iOS and Android.

Cross-Platform Apps

Faster time to market. The app’s codebase can be shared across iOS and Android platforms — one team for development and maintenance. Cross-platform technologies currently deliver experiences on par with native apps.

Mixed reality combines the digital world with the user’s physical environment, enabling an immersive interaction. Wearing mixed reality headsets, the user sees holograms that can be manipulated with gestures.

Magic Leap and Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 are two companies that offer comprehensive mixed reality software and hardware that enhance the perception of reality.

The term mixed reality is often used interchangeably with augmented reality.

Augmented reality has many business applications. From retail and education to manufacturing and training, AR tech adds another layer of immersion, giving users a better chance to experience the world and retain information.

These two options aren’t mutually exclusive and depend on your project. For example, while you’re creating your in-house team, an outsourced team builds your digital product. This way, you’re able to improve delivery time and capability.

Now let’s break down other cooperation options.

In-House Recruitment

Usually the departments involved in in-house recruitment include HR, accounting, and IT. You can imagine that the cross-departmental involvement can stretch the recruitment process to up to a year. Then there’s onboarding, training, team building, etc. 

Outsourcing

With an outsourced team, you’re acquiring the necessary product development capability virtually in an instant.

You don’t have to think about HR matters, accounting, or onboarding — an outsourced team can quickly get to work.

Staff Augmentation

When your in-house team has taken over the product, you can still consider staff augmentation services to address pure development work. This frees up your in-house developers to focus on the business value of the product.

Similarly, when you need specialist skills to implement specific features in your app — e.g., AR capability — you can use staff augmentation to increase your team’s skill set.

In short, we can offload your team’s backlog and improve their development capabilities.

Now let’s illustrate it with a gaming concept. Capture the flag vs. protect the flag.

Capture the flag -> your team develops core product capabilities, those that attract customers and bring value by giving you a competitive edge on the market.

Protect the flag -> we take care of the foundation of the product by, e.g., aggregating issues and ideas that your team reports as it works. We then address these, letting your team focus on the business value of the product, without worrying about the backlog.

Our devs handle pure development work, i.e., the lines of code that have to be written, while your in-house mobile devs work on expanding and growing the product.

Check out how this approach helped Ricardo release its mobile application.

This type of cooperation always starts with us tuning into your project, customers, and you. We listen and come up with ways how to best fit into your setup. This way, we can collect enough information to start working on a project.

The key thing to remember here is that we often don’t need full immersion in a project. That means our devs don’t have to participate in all the meetings to be able to successfully move the project forward.

We’ve been a supplier of staff augmentation for more than a decade.

An outsourced development team is an asset of experience — if your team has expertise in hybrid app development, you still need native devs on board to whip a great product for iOS and Android.

We bring a stack of brains filled with unique skills that can complement your in-house team. For example, by using analytics and user research necessary to grow and expand a project.

On the other hand, we can improve the in-house dev team’s capacity and clear their backlog.

Lastly, an outsourced development team is not a long-term commitment. We offer our clients a very easy exit procedure — if after a test sprint (two-week product iteration) you’re not satisfied with results, we part our ways without financial consequences for you.

You could, but you shouldn’t. A close partnership between designers and developers helps with a lot of things:

• Solutions and features built by designers and developers together are cheaper to implement because the developer participates in the creation of a solution from the very start.
• The proposed solutions are possible to achieve from a technical point of view. You should avoid a situation where the design is made by designers without enough technical knowledge. It can result in a situation where the design can’t be implemented or simply isn’t cost-efficient to be built.
• When designers work together with developers, the implementation process is faster. A developer can report that there are some technical issues with a particular design, which a designer can quickly amend.
• Reduced losses resulting from constant communication between designers and developers from different teams.

Note: A mobile app agency should be experienced in working with designs delivered by the client as well as create designs in house.