Interview with: NEXTAP

Nextap solutions is a mobile app and web development company creating apps mostly for foreign clients. We are focused on developing comprehensive solutions tailored for your success. We write code, offer consultations, and create an eye-catching design. Nextap is a group of software enthusiasts whose passion are modern technologies. The development team consists of people who are professionals in their field.

We primarily specialize in development of native apps for iOS and Android. The design team creates attractive and thorough designs which are also functional and simply timeless. We offer job opportunities to IT students and when necessary, we also collaborate with contractors. The Nextap spirit is probably best described by a collection of feats which we call “principles”. Each principle represents a certain kind of behavior, which is inherent to each of us – the principles therefore express Nextap values. The client’s satisfaction is our highest priority and we care about personal approach to each and every one of our clients and their projects. We always do our best to find the best solution for them. Paying attention to details and high quality work matter to us – we put everything into our clients’ projects. Software is our joy, we are interested in new technologies.

We work on internal projects within the process of self-education and Techcrowds. To make knowledge sharing in Nextap easier, we organize Techtalks – events reserved for presenting topics we are interested in. The purpose of Techcrowds is to get our hands on new technology and improve our skills.

When developing an internal project, the whole team works together which is something client projects often do not allow. We then apply the newly learned skills when working on client projects. To ensure the best direct management, we have regular meetings between each employee and their respective manager. This time is exclusively reserved for the two of them to provide self-reflection regarding the employee’s personal goals and the company’s principles. Additionally, during these meetings each party is encouraged to raise questions and ideas about what could be changed in the company. The opinions of each team member matter, we are open to any stimulating discussion leading to higher satisfaction and creating the best possible environment for everyone.

We write our Android applications in Kotlin and use modern Android Jetpack components. We use the MVVM architecture pattern and dependency injection in all projects. For handling asynchronous tasks, we rely on Kotlin Coroutines or RxJava. Testing and publishing new versions of our apps is handled through CI/CD. iOS applications are written in Swift and because we like clean code, we prefer the VIPER architecture pattern.

We also like writing in Redux. Libraries are integrated through Cocoapods or Swift Package Manager. We use Jenkins to automate the development process. Backend is written in Node.js with typescript, our data is stored in MySQL or MongoDb databases. Frontend uses React.js with typescript and styled components. Data is pulled from GraphQL and tests run on the Jest, Mocha and Chai frameworks. Infrastructure is hosted in AWS. Our designs are created in Sketch, Adobe XD and Affinity Designer. We use Abstract for version control and InVision for prototyping and hand-off.

Our team has tried out many new technologies in the past year. Our Android team has started using Kotlin Coroutines for asynchronous tasks and tried out new dependency injection frameworks such as Koin. Backend has migrated to to GraphQL. We have also worked with Flutter and our designers have tried out Figma.

We plan the work on an ongoing basis, so we can easily see who is performing their tasks and how. The usual working day starts with stand-ups. We set daily goals, define priorities, assign tasks.

We inform each other about what’s going on on the projects and within the teams. At the end of every week the whole team gets together and talks about what happened that week, what went well and what didn’t. We define long term company goals which are then reflected in our personal goals. The purpose of personal goals is to progress in our individual skills in accordance with the direction in which the company is moving. Every goal we set should be a little challenge for the departments so that the results are most beneficial for the department’s growth.

In the upcoming months, we will be further developing the Steller app, which was included in Apple’s The Best of 2019. It is a huge commitment to participate in something of such magnitude. We would like to achieve similar success with the Android version of the app. A great company challenge for the near future is to release our first major internal fun project Foosapp into the world.

Working in Nextap is not an ordinary 9 to 5 job. We hang out, have garden offices with BBQ and play games together. We like the Bang card game, building Lego and since we are into movies, no premiere goes unnoticed. We also play sports and the level of our badminton skill is getting better every Monday. We have annual hackathons in the Czech mountains. We also participate in foosball tournaments to promote our app called Foosapp.