Hani Arab, Chief Information Officer, Assetlink
Low Code Application Platforms (LCAP) have allowed the delivery of innovation at speed. They have empowered and transformed legacy IT functions from service maintainers (keep the lights on) to business enablers.
Furthermore, LCAP has expanded the resource pool by inviting non-native software-trained developers to enter the application development domain. These non-native application developers are commonly employees with deep business knowledge who understand their operational challenges and have developed broad relationships across the organization. These personas are very effective in discovery workshops and solution development sessions because of their deep business knowledge and extended stakeholder relationships.
The inherent paradox is innovation at speed does not negate the need for traditional application development governance practices because the negation will inevitably stifle innovation.
There is a real temptation to enter solution mode quickly without taking time to distill and document the problem we aim to solve and consider solution integration with our enterprise architecture. Furthermore, defining success criteria and associated targets is critical to measure and reporting project performance. I have experienced the delivery of small working prototypes that have become solutions in production which sounds excellent, but this practice establishes an expectation by our customers. More often, the case is rapid delivery without defining the problem, documenting the design, and establishing a project charter with clear success criteria and performance targets, which leads to conflict across stakeholders with alternate perspectives of product success and performance. Furthermore, precedence is a toxic attribute that can be difficult to course-correct back to a more governed framework.
As organizations seek to increase productivity, improve efficiency and create an innovation culture, Low-code, No-code platforms provide a solution that realizes these ambitions. Here are ten learnings I have gained over several years of developing enterprise applications in our LCAP, which powered our strategic competitiveness.
1) Problem Definition - Spend time understanding the business challenge and defining the problem, ensuring multiple diverse stakeholder perspectives have been sorted. Then document and share with stakeholders to ensure alignment. The problem definition document will be the foundational reference for defining success criteria and performance targets.
2) Low-Code, No-Code, No-Go - Keep an open and broad perspective of the business challenge and problem definition. Refrain from assuming the solution is technologyenabled. Consider options to solve the problem without technology, such as a change in process or practice. I have seen technology-driven solutions implemented that resulted in marginal improvements because the root cause of the challenges was people and processes with no amount of technology able to compete.
3) Governance Fit - Consider an appropriate level of software development and project governance suitable for the size and maturity of the organization. The balance is between ensuring agility and innovation without bureaucracy, confusion, or chaos. Use a popular and mature framework or create a hybrid framework by using the elements of one or two existing governance frameworks such as PMBOK, Prince2, Scrum, and Kanban Agile.
4) Champions - Identify and engage platform champions early in the development and testing phases to support them with learning and training. Platform champions become ambassadors and catalysts for embedded adoption with a source for continuous improvements.
5) Start Small - If the situation accommodates a small project, seize the opportunity. If not, break down a more extensive project into phases with clearly defined functional outcomes in each stage. A start-small approach allows for time to develop and refine the governance processes, team collaboration, and platform development capabilities and provides a speedy turnaround that will instill confidence and support in the stakeholders for future phases and projects.
6) Security by Design - In a similar vain of wanting to innovate at speed to the detriment of an enterprise architecture or project governance, so too is the danger of ignoring or oversimplifying the importance of incorporating information security in the solutions we develop in our development platforms. Remain disciplined to integrate information security and data privacy across the development lifecycle.
7) Saying “No” is not a Response - Don’t limit your ability to provide a solution on the dependency of the LCAP. All modern LCAPs have extensive API Library capabilities that allow integration and further processing via external applications. Therefore, augment your solutions with additional external capabilities that resolve the capability gap by seamlessly integrating them. Consider the LCAP as another tool in your toolbox, amongst others like Robotic Process Automation (RPA), public form builders, Business Intelligence (BI) tools, digital communication applications, etc...
8) Plan for Maintenance Overhead - If your LCAP is widely adopted, you will need to plan for the maintenance and continual refinement and improvement of your in situ applications. This may sound like a bad thing, but it’s a good thing. The high utilization of the applications you deliver will inherently drive feedback for improvements or, with the maturity of the process, will also require enhancements. Nonetheless, the continual improvement of these applications keeps them relevant and valuable, which extends their investment return.
“As Organizations Seek to Increase Productivity, Improve Efficiency and Create an Innovation Culture, Low-Code, No-Code Platforms Provide a Solution that Realizes These Ambitions”
9) Track your Performance - Peter Drucker famously said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Using ITIL service management, track your team effort on projects from discovery sessions, solution design, development, testing, application support, enhancement requests, and anything else that contributes to the services your function or line of business delivers. LCAPs are significant business investments, so demonstrating the effort and value return quickly is essential for sustained senior leadership support.
10) The Long Game - Regardless of changing platform providers for commercial or capability reasons, you will have an ongoing need for the platform. The longer you leverage the LCAP, the more dependent your organization will be, so regularly assess the market competitors and invest in vendor management, ensuring growth and development in the relationship. At least yearly, I meet with my account executive and showcase the work my team has developed in the platform and work collaboratively to drive value from the LCAP. I have found this approach to deliver support above and beyond what is contractually agreed.
According to a recent Gartner report, the LCAP market is projected for a worldwide growth rate of 20% in 2023*. The growth will fuel further investment, which will grow platform innovation and empower technology functions within organizations to realize our strategic goals.
In the business case for adopting an LCAP, I referred to and marketed the LCAP as our Digital Innovation Platform because I could readily and tangibly describe a future vision of what the LCAP would achieve for the business. I would often say to our functional leaders, “if you can conceive and articulate it, we can develop and build it”.
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