In an interview with TheWebAppMarket, Karol Wegner, CEO of itCraft, discloses biggest challenges encountered by an app development company and how to face them.

Let’s check his journey!

Q1) Tell us about your background and your journey with the company. What are the key services offered by your company?

Bartek Pieślak (co-founder of itCraft) and I have known each other since high school. Then we went to college together and after that, we worked together in several companies. In 2010 we decided to create a company – and that’s when itCraft was born.

We’ve been working as developers, technical leaders and project managers before, so we had industry background, but we didn’t have experience in running a business. Nonetheless, our enthusiasm and energy were unstoppable.

Since then, itCraft evolved significantly. Now we hire more than 65 people and our plan for this year is to recruit 10-15 new employees. Our essential services include comprehensive web and mobile application development using the most innovative technologies. We create native and cross-platform apps with frameworks like Flutter, React Native, Angular, JavaScript and many more.

Our team consists of software developers that specialize in the frontend, backend and mobile, UX and UI designers, quality assurance specialists and project managers. This means we can take care of the whole production process, which is an undeniable advantage for our clients.

Q2) The tech industry keeps on changing, for instance, the current COVID-19 situation leading to mass adoption of remote working? How have you prepared your company for these changes? 

We’ve reacted extremely quickly to the first signs of crisis – and that’s a significant part of our success in that matter. Our clients also changed their operations quite early to adapt to the new situation. For some of them, it meant suspending our cooperation or even withdrawing from it. 

But after one month of “panic mode”, it all stabilized and now we even sense higher demand for our services. We used this short downtime to perform technical migrations we were postponing for some time. We’ve also been improving our frameworks and learning new technologies. Not to mention intense work in the marketing department to produce an extensive amount of valuable content.

This demand I mentioned applies mostly to developing mobile and web solutions that allow remote communication, providing services online, or placing orders for food and other goods. 

We’ve decided to focus on this niche because we did solutions like that before. We started to inform our current clients that we can help them with that and tell our potential clients that our services can support their digital transformation for the new reality caused by Covid-19. 

Besides that, we’ve also implemented remote work into our daily operations almost immediately. It wasn’t that hard as we already have been working in 4 offices around Poland. However, now it’s a little bit different as we are all separated for a long time.

At the end of May, we will allow voluntary office work for all employees that have no conditions to perform their tasks at home effectively.

Q3) The majority of our readership consists of an audience with a technical background, one of the most commonly asked queries that we receive is about agile development. itCraft being a leader in this vertical, can you explain a few agile development methodologies, tools, practices and on what principles it is based on?

When it comes to Agile development, our principal methodology is, of course, Scrum. We’ve adapted it to our needs. All the elements like ceremonies, working in sprints, daily calls, demos, planning are a part of itCraft’s work routine.

Our primary task management tool is Jira that we enhance with a couple of plugins, one of them being a quality assurance tracker called Zephyr. Written communication happens mainly via Slack. 

We are also fond of Google’s G Suite – for example, Google Meet for remote video conferences. When it comes to source code, there is no surprise – Git and tools associated with it is our way to go.

Q4) According to you, what are the most helpful technological platforms and tools to use for app development? Have you implemented them in your company?

Solutions we develop at itCraft are created using lots of different technologies. Mainly we focus on native ones like Kotlin for Android and Swift for iOS. A significant part of our work is also done with leading cross-platform frameworks – Flutter and React Native. For the frontend, we mainly use Angular and Vue.JS.

Various tools help us on a daily basis. As I mentioned before – Jira, Git, Slack, Google Drive and other Google services are essential for effective work organization. Our UX and UI specialists use programs like inVision, Adobe Xd and Sketch to create mockups, prototypes and beautiful designs.

Q5) Over the years, itCraft has built an impressive portfolio by contributing numerous projects in various domains including healthcare, fintech, m-commerce and many more. Based on this experience, which platform would you recommend between Flutter and React native for app development and why?

This subject is a big part of our recently released ebook, which I recommend downloading. You can find a comprehensive answer to that question in it.

In a nutshell, these two frameworks compete with each other. Flutter is gaining recognition quite fast because it fixes some issues that are present in React Native. Both platforms are an alternative to native development, so we should rather compare them to it instead of putting them against each other.

What matters in any project are the competences of the team. Flutter is easy to learn for Android developers that specialize in Kotlin or Java and iOS developers that know Swift or Objective-C. 

Knowledge of mobile app development is essential here, no matter which language or framework you use. As for React Native, the trend shows that React.JS devs chose to learn it as a natural next step in their career.

At itCraft, we build apps in both frameworks, although we prefer Flutter as we consider it more forthcoming. I want to emphasize, though, that the core of our work is based on native solutions.

Q6) Can you elaborate the key points why itCraft stands out amidst thousands of other app development companies?

First of all, we stand up on quality that we always apply to the whole development process – so we don’t compromise when fixing issues or introducing new features. The products we deliver are always meeting the highest standards – which is reflected in reviews and feedback we get from our clients.

The next value that we genuinely care about is effective communication. It’s another thing that people we collaborate with appreciate a lot. We always quickly inform the product owner about problems and risks. We stay in touch daily. A dedicated project manager takes care of all communication needs internally, within a team and externally, with the client.

Another thing that comes to my mind is the experience in web and mobile development. We are doing it for 10 years now with the main focus on mobile technologies for 7-8 years and that makes us one of the most seasoned companies on the market. 

Expertise is one of the crucial elements when it comes to running a software house. Our team always looks for the best solutions instead of quickly producing apps without any plan and strategy. Thanks to our experience we can advise every client, no matter what problem they bring to us.

I think these three traits are the most important to outstanding in the IT industry. I also want to mention comprehensive services as something particularly important. The fact that we can lead the whole project, from idea, through design to quality assurance and deployment, is what attracts our clients and makes them stay.

Q7) Over the years, itCraft has successfully delivered hundreds of projects, can you share one of your favorite case studies that you can say as your claim to fame moment?

We’ve completed many projects that we are proud of. It is worth mentioning that we are cooperating with well-known brands from around the world. Our app project for Makro Cash&Carry could be an example here. It won a prestigious award called Mobile Trends Awards, which is an honor for us.

Makro is a global leader of wholesale business. We’ve been working with the Polish branch for a couple of years now and our first project together was a mobile application. 

Then it became an ongoing process of further product development where we enhance it by adding new features. This collaboration is superb because it’s well organized. All team members know their duties. We really enjoy working on it and are glad the users and industry experts appreciate the app.

Q8) What major opportunities do you foresee for your brand? How do you plan to handle them? 

As I mentioned, Covid-19 will definitely change the IT industry. We will also observe significant changes in people’s habits. Their attitude towards brands and mobile applications is already evolving. The demand for mobile solutions is continuously growing.

A great example would be our home country – Poland – where, due to a lockdown, it was almost impossible to get some things done. Now, the reality realigned and running errands online is nothing strange.

So the main conclusion here is that Covid-19 sped up digital transformation, especially when it comes to mobile products. My main observation in that field is that this change is particularly visible in healthcare or fitness. No one imagined that we would have online gyms, am I right? 

Now, we have online therapies, yoga practices, personal workouts, doctor appointments. Everything can be digital and mobile apps are particularly handy here as they allow us to pick our own place and time to do these things. It brings a huge potential for our business to grow.

Q9) What do you think will be the biggest challenges the industry will face after the COVID-19 situation gets under control? Would you like to share some tips that can benefit small-scale enterprises that are just hitting the app development scene?

I guess the industries that were already hurt by the pandemic crisis are going to suffer for much longer. For example, the whole traveling sector (airlines, hotels), but also all brands that rely on gatherings of people like cultural events, sports competitions, concerts, etc. 

Some companies that are now offering their services offline should definitely go online. I mainly mean the healthcare and education sectors. This way, they will gain an opportunity to reach thousands of new potential clients. 

For example, local therapists can now be available for people around the country or even the world. This also brings a big chance for all innovative startups that want to provide these types of services.

Q10. Lastly, any word of advice for our users?

Be safe and remember about common sense!

February and March were the time of panic where our reactions were strong and we weren’t sure what to do precisely. 

Now, the market is introducing plenty of innovative ideas and proposals. Everyone has their chance to become a part of it now.