Tips for rapid, scalable, low-code app development right now

I think we can all attest, now more than ever, the world changes rapidly. In our current reality, remote and distributed workforces are highlighting the gaps in existing processes. The need to be Agile, to rapidly build, modify, or automate to fill process gaps is more important now than ever before.

While continually searching for bright spots, I’ve seen many inspiring stories in our world of software. We partnered with a major healthcare company to build an app – in a matter of days – that helps them track and manage the health and safety of over 100,000 employees and care providers. There have been other stories around large government and financial institutions where they’ve built net new or modified existing apps in a matter of days – not the traditional enterprise norm of week or months. Apps that positively impact hundreds of thousands of users.

It’s been inspiring and I wanted to share how this is being done. The big secret is, it’s not through low code alone. While many messages may have you believe otherwise, low code itself is not a silver bullet. The right software needs to be combined with the proper strategy to ensure your business has the necessary tools and support, and so IT can guarantee innovation and scale take place in a secure, compliant, and repeatable fashion.

Here are tips from our low-code approach that may help you rapidly deploy and change the solutions you need now … and in the future

• Bring people together – Collaboration is more important now than ever. Don’t settle on disparate authoring environments for your users. Instead, bring them together in one collaborative and intuitive authoring environment where business users, professional developers, and enterprise IT build, test, and deploy applications – together.
  
• Start small – Help ensure a successful outcome by defining smaller, tangible problems with one agreed-upon and well thought out business outcome. We call these microjourneys. You can think of these as parts of an overall journey that deliver a business outcome, such as health tracking, getting a loan, onboarding a new supplier, etc. The goal is not to handle every scenario. A well-defined microjourney can easily be expanded and built upon.
  
• Be prepared for change – Get things right at the start – and be ready for whatever comes next – by designing your organization’s business architecture from the center out. Case management capabilities serve as the uniting force to orchestrate and bring all of your work together while also serving as the mechanism to connect them to the proper people, channels, and data. Being able to easily capture all this information in one place breaks down pre-existing silos and sets you up with the ability to grow, scale, and react when needed.
  
• Foster a culture of innovation – Advancing with low-code development at enterprise scale requires the right team working and growing together. This means identifying strong candidates – those with both the curiosity and disposition – and mentoring them through the process. As your team achieves a few successes, establish a community of practice to cultivate and radiate those best practices throughout your organization.
  
• Don’t forget about governance – Achieving scale is great, but if left unchecked, it may leave you open to performance, reliability, and security vulnerabilities. It’s important that IT leaders have the proper tools that provide visibility into all ongoing development projects and empower them to define the proper guardrails that will help protect against future issues.

Building an app, whether simple or complex, shouldn’t be a struggle

At Pega we believe we’re all on the same team, and that business users, developers, and IT should be free to collaborate, innovate, and deliver critical applications – all from one inclusive environment.

Our low-code factory approach provides the tools, training, and guidelines for anyone to quickly develop quality enterprise apps with the consistency of a fine-tuned assembly line. The approach empowers you to build and change apps faster with scalable, low-code capabilities that enable business users, developers, and IT to collaborate, innovate, and deliver critical applications from one inclusive environment.

Pega’s proven approach gives your employees the freedom and confidence to build the apps they need to succeed and gives your professional developers back their time to focus on high-value coding projects. At the same time, it hands IT the control to ensure every app is created within your organizational guardrails – whether it’s one or 1,000 apps built at a time.

With Pega’s low-code factory approach, you can operationalize and scale low-code development company-wide to accelerate your digital transformation.

Learn more:

• Download our eBooks on embracing low-code development and operationalizing app development with a low-code app factory approach.
• Get more tips from Anthony on achieving low-code success in the enterprise.
• Watch this on-demand webinar on low-code app development in action.
• Connect with other developers in our Pega Community for deep-dive tips on low-code success.
• Try the Pega Platform™ for freeand start supercharging your app development.
• Join us at PegaWorld iNspireto see demos of the newest tech, connect with Pega experts, and hear how some of the world’s most recognizable brands are optimizing and scaling app development.