The growing need to rapidly digitize and automate processes, along with a burgeoning demand for application development, has created a crisis within countless IT organizations. In fact, analyst firm Gartner predicts that the market demand for app development will grow at least five times faster than IT’s capacity to deliver through 2021. This is further complicated by the growing need for data scientists to manage and drive value from artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as well as the shortage of skilled developers and engineers.
To address the ever-increasing market demand for app development solutions and meet DevOps challenges, Pegasystems, the leader in software for customer engagement and operational excellence, is driving the no-code/low-code (NCLC) movement.
SourceForge had the opportunity to connect with Sid Misra, Senior Director of Product Marketing – Developer Experience at Pegasystems, to talk about their low code/no code platform and share how the NCLC approach empowers business users and professional developers. Misra also sheds light on the most common misconceptions about NCLC and shares his predictions for DevOps in the coming years.
Q: First and foremost, can you please share with us a brief history of the company? When and how did Pegasystems get its start and what expertise do you provide?
Sid Misra, Senior Director of Product Marketing – Developer Experience at Pegasystems
A: Pega has evolved from a company known primarily as the undisputed leader in business process management (BPM) to one that is now redefining customer engagement with intelligent software deployed at the world’s leading organizations. Building upon our legacy foundation and using it as a distinct advantage, we’ve evolved customer engagement from a static system of records into a dynamic system of insights that deliver exceptional customer experiences at every touchpoint and channel. By infusing artificial intelligence (AI) across our solutions, our clients can sense their customers’ moments of need in real time and drive personalized engagements in context, which increases customer satisfaction and the bottom line.
Today, Pega is the leader in software for customer engagement and operational excellence, helping enterprises accelerate their digital transformation journeys. Pega’s adaptive, cloud-architected software – built on its unified Pega Platform – empowers people to rapidly deploy and easily extend and change applications to meet strategic business needs. Over its 35-year history, Pega has delivered award-winning capabilities in customer relationship management (CRM) and digital process automation (DPA), powered by advanced artificial intelligence and robotic automation.
Q: What business sectors do you serve and who are some of your current customers?
A: Pega currently serves enterprises within many different business sectors, including manufacturing & high technology, financial services, communications & media, insurance, healthcare & life sciences, government, and energy & utilities. We currently work with the top eight largest healthcare companies, seven of the top 10 insurance companies, six of the top 10 global banks, and eight of the top 10 global communications service providers.
If you’ve driven a car, used your credit card, called a company for service, opened an account, applied for a loan, accepted an offer, flown on an airplane, paid a bill, submitted a claim, or countless other things you do in your day-to-day life, you’ve likely interacted with Pega.
Q: The no-code/low-code (NCLC) approach is becoming a buzzword in the software development industry lately. Can you explain to us the differences between “low-code” and “no-code” approaches?
A: Low-code application development platforms help bridge an organization’s skilled developer shortage gap. These platforms are quicker and less expensive to customize in-house. They also give non-programmers the ability to visually build out application specifications, empowering citizen developers within an organization, like business people and marketers, to work collaboratively with IT to design and modify operation-specific applications.
The question isn’t whether or not to embrace low-code, it’s what to look for when implementing the technology. Some low-code platforms enable organizations to create only simple lightweight applications that fail to scale and offer limited reusability. Other low-code platforms provide disconnected app authoring environments that perpetuate a siloed approach to development for business and IT. With these types of platforms, organizations end up spending too much time stitching together pieces of apps created in these disparate environments.
In reality, low-code development is nothing new to the industry. A recent Pega-commissioned survey from Frost & Sullivan found that it’s not just hype; 81 percent of respondents already use a visual model-driven or low-code approach. At Pega, we believe that both professional and citizen developer experiences should be visually-driven and end-to-end at all times – without the need to write complex code. No-code enables developers at any level with the ability to quickly design applications using pre-configured and reusable building blocks.
Q: How do software testers and developers feel about no code? What benefits has no code brought to DevOps?
A: No-code empowers organizations already using DevOps. For those organizations that have already invested in a DevOps infrastructure, a no-code environment makes it easy to leverage popular third-party industry tools. For example, developers can easily integrate to Jenkins and Gradle for automation management, JFrog Artifactory and Git for code repositories, and a variety of testing tools, including Junit and Selenium. Without a no-code approach, developers need to write complex custom code to integrate to these tools, which is time-consuming and difficult to maintain.
No-code also makes testing painless by promoting an easy and intuitive approach for full stack testing: unit testing, API testing, and scenario-based UI tests. Software testers can quickly and easily create automated tests without learning to write code or relying on professional developers. This helps them to focus on the most important element: making sure they have solid test coverage and have the time to test real customer scenarios.
Q: Tell us how low-code/no-code solutions support today’s modern business users and professional software developers. How does it make businesses more flexible and agile in the face of increasing digitization?
A: Businesses are increasingly recognizing the advantages of using low-code and no-code software development platforms. Application development has become accessible to anyone, regardless of technical ability, allowing a faster output of new processes and app functionalities for organizations. Organizations enable an agile environment for collaboration by bringing citizen developers into the development process. Business users and IT staff work together on requirements, then rapidly build and deploy business rules, processes, and offers.
Adopting a NCLC platform and agile delivery methodology can bring every part of a business into the development cycle, allowing businesses to leverage knowledge of front-line workers and foster constant collaboration between groups. This digital development environment, combined with the frequent releases inherent in agile processes, help speed continuous application development and innovation.
Q: In what ways can NCLC software solutions support the movement towards high-productivity rapid application development (RAD)?
A: NCLC software solutions create more productive and rapid application development because they can scale to the scope of a business and evolve quickly. Bringing the business closer to the development process eliminates shadow IT and empowers development teams to ensure innovation and scale take place in a compliant fashion.
Most enterprise applications need to be extended to multiple channels, including mobile apps, chatbots, self-service portals, and the next big unknown thing. A NCLC platform that enables the reuse of application artifacts will, therefore, enhance app development productivity and consistency, ultimately helping businesses meet demanding end-user expectations. By using one open and flexible NCLC platform that supports an iterative and agile approach, organizations can build seamless, consistent apps that function quickly and consistently engage across all channels and devices.
Q: As the leader in software for customer engagement and digital process automation, how are you taking advantage of no-code/low-code solutions? And how did you embed no code into your own processes?
A: While NCLC is popular buzzword now, Pega has spent over 35 years using a model-driven approach to application development. At Pega, we strongly believe in using our products and solutions internally. We have a program within our organization where employees in sales, marketing, operations, finance, and legal departments are encouraged to create their own internal departmental apps using Pega’s no-code platform. This has been very a successful initiative and we have launched over 25 internal applications created by business users at Pega. This initiative has also enabled us to make continuous improvements by taking internal lessons learned and applying them to our no-code platform experience.
No-code app authoring for business developers
Q: What is your advice for software developers and business users who have not yet embrace the idea of integrating NCLC in their workflows?
A: It’s not just hype – the low code market is growing and the options available for businesses are greater than ever, so it’s critical to evaluate your requirements and needs before selecting a platform. On one end, there are platforms that provide unique environments and a siloed approach to development for business and IT. On the other end of the spectrum are next generation, role-based authoring environments which provide the right tools to anyone who interacts with enterprise applications, including visual and intuitive authoring experiences offering NCLC for citizen developers and advanced tools for professional developers, system administration, and AI modeling. Users can easily toggle between different studios to quickly access what they need, where and when they need it, making for a seamless experience.
The time has come to abandon slow, expensive, and ineffective code-based development. With an expanding market of providers, organizations looking to transition to NCLC should begin assessing their needs to find the best option suited to their business operation.
Q: There are a plethora of myths about no-code/low-code that exist today, keeping business users and developers from tapping its true value. What are some of the most common misconceptions about no-code and low-code that you want to correct and clarify?
A: Here are the most common misconceptions about NCLC:
Myth #1: Only a chosen few are successful in using an NCLC approach.
There’s a common misconception that only the “unicorns,” i.e. Amazon, Netflix, and Google can implement this digital, forward-thinking technology. However, because of the continuous disruption precipitated by the rapid innovation of such companies, NCLC needs to be adopted by organizations of all sizes across industries to be competitive with these digitally native companies.
Myth #2: Low code just encourages shadow IT and equals loss of control for IT.
Contrary to this myth, low code actually gives oversight back to IT teams by allowing them to architect parameters and monitoring capabilities that empower business personnel to deploy applications within the IT team’s guidelines. These guardrails enable IT to confidently give the business more control while ensuring the IT ecosystem doesn’t run amuck.
Myth #3: Low-code is not real development.
As a developer, I want to code, not configure. Low-code does not mean limiting developers from using their favorite technologies. In fact, low-code empowers rapid application development by significantly reducing the time spent on mundane manual coding steps. By using pre-configured and reusable building blocks throughout the development process, developers can focus more on solving business problems, and deliver faster solutions. Low-code offers developers the use of powerful drag-and-drop UI designers, or their X framework of choice, to design robust applications that are not only intuitive but leverage consistent process and decision logic, regardless of channel function.
Myth #4: “Hitting a wall” with low code.
There is much that can be done with low code; however, IT teams often harbor concerns that an application can only go so far with the citizen developer and will ultimately require re-coding to integrate effectively with more complex DevOps. The myth of “hitting the wall” with low code is based on the misconception that the citizen developer must take on every aspect of developing an app. While there are always more complex functionalities, a low code approach enables business and DevOps teams to collaborate more efficiently and integrate new apps effectively. Low code empowers productivity for all by giving both technical and non-technical personnel the tools they need to be more effective.
Myth #5: Low code has to be challenging.
The low code revolution is here; however, there are still many organizations that perceive it as a difficult undertaking. In reality, low code can be implemented seamlessly with the right support in place, including through the creation of a formal Center of Excellence (COE). At its core, a Center of Excellence (COE) is a team of knowledgeable and experienced business process management, customer relationship management, and business domain experts equipped with an arsenal of best practices and tools. A COE can help successfully deploy low code while alleviating the burden on IT, so they can focus on creating turnkey guidelines that can be applied across departments.
Q: What are your predictions for DevOps in the coming year? And how is Pegasystems addressing these?
A: DevOps will be for both business and professional developers: DevOps needs to be adopted by organizations of all sizes across industries to be competitive with these digitally native companies. In a recent Frost & Sullivan survey commissioned by Pega, we found that strategic adopters of DevOps were 55 percent more likely to have the competitive ability to grow profitably. This means business and IT will be working and innovating together in tight collaboration. It also means business developers must be empowered to deploy their innovations fast. Pega is addressing these industry productions with our “one-click” deployment capability, which makes it easy for citizen developers with a single click to move their changes from development to staging to production.
Testing will be simplified: Organizations often ignore the focus on automated testing. Automated testing not only ensures high-quality applications but is critical to attaining DevOps nirvana, i.e. moving toward an “always ready to ship” software-to-customer model (complete automation of the software development lifecycle from an idea, to development, to testing, to release cycle delivery and production). Pega provides no-code unit & UI testing capabilities so anyone, from professional developers to citizen developers, can quickly create and execute tests without writing any code.
About Pegasystems
Pegasystems Inc. is the leader in software for customer engagement and operational excellence. Headquartered in Cambridge, MA, Pega has been delivering award-winning software solutions to help the world’s leading brands achieve successful digital transformation and breakthrough business results. Pega specializes in business process management (BPM), customer relationship management (CRM), digital process automation (DPA), predictive analytics, call center software, mobile application development software, and more.