Validating Low-code platforms for Digital Transformation Engagements
Every organization is looking for best ways to scope & scale Digital Transformation and the buzz to consider a low-code framework is more than ever.
Introduction
The approach to implement Digital Transformation engagements differ based on the Organization’s business vision and also the overall maturity of the IT landscape.
There are always Organizations at both ends of the spectrum — some wanting to take a strategic approach by building the foundation and then scale later, while others taking a more tactical approach, targeting the low-hanging fruits to score early. They are constantly looking for alternative approaches to the traditional bespoke model and the chatter on low-code is becoming more prominent. So, what’s low-code really? Let’s try and cover that first.
A Low-code development platform is a software that provides a graphical IDE for Citizen Developers to create applications — while writing little or no code!
Low-code platform promises to make app development extremely simple and extend the capability to citizen developers.
Citizen developers are the staff in an organization who have certain degree of technical knowledge, but more importantly have in-depth understanding of how business works. They wield the low-code platform that provides a visual IDE to drag/drop components, integrate them, build applications and orchestrate.
Gartner has released the magic quadrant on Low-code application platforms (LCAP). It features platforms like Outsystems, Appian, Mendix, Microsoft, Salesforce who lead in this space. AWS recently launched honey code, where one can use EXCEL to build apps. There are even AI based development frameworks using natural language processing (NLP) to develop React components on the fly!
So, the buzz on low-code is real and industry heavy weights are investing in it.
There are lot of success stories on the web that illustrate apps getting developed far quicker, transforming the app development. It does seem like a panacea to the challenges faced in the App Development lifecycle! But, we also encounter stories that suggest caution — often low-code platforms push the envelope and is promoted with an idea that skilled resources are not required and with extravagant claims on limited code & high productivity.
So, how to make the decision? Let’s break it down.
Key factors
The factors influencing a digital transformation engagement remains the same, irrespective of platforms/frameworks selection. It’s crucial to validate that the Low-code platform supports the factors depicted in the diagram below to realise the business vision and is future proof.
The expectations are much more than a WYSIWYG editor with drag & drop capability to build impressive UI pages. The platform should have capability to create APIs for integration, to provide ready-made adapters integrating with popular popular platforms (like SAP, Salesforce), to spawn databases with CRUD APIs, to provide workflow functions, to orchestrate the business workflow, to provide analytics and many many more.
The non-functional requirements extend further — capability to provide cloud deployment support, to provide logging & monitoring, to provide comprehensive DevSecOps for continuous release planning, to scale for performance, to ensure end-to-end security and most importantly to provide a robust developer ecosystem.
During these platform validation cycles, the focus tends to be more on the cool drag & drop functions from a comprehensive widget library that generates impressive UI. In many instances these impressive output is exaggerated and often trivialize the complexity involved in integrating and orchestrating an array of platforms to achieve the desired result. The iceberg diagram below depicts the complexity involved in any enterprise app landscape. The tip of the iceberg is normally the app user interface, but for an app to function, a lot has to happen behind the scenes (or beneath the water!)
Validating these key factors are essential when selecting a low-code platform.
The Low-code market
The low-code platforms have matured a lot over a period of time and they serve at both ends of the spectrum.
There are comprehensive low-code platforms that provide end-to-end solutions like Appian, Mendix, Outsystems etc.
There are also low-code solutions available that target niche areas. For example, Strapi for headless CMS, Airtable to create databases on the fly, Zapier for workflow automation, Hasura for GraphQL APIs, Shopify for Commerce and so on. IT Teams now have the opportunity to leverage these niche low-code solutions to assemble a custom platform for the organization based on their needs.
Developer ecosystem
Many low-code platforms provide IDE to support the app development. Sometimes, this will be a cloud based IDE. So, it’s important to validate if the internal developer community is authorized and comfortable to access and develop on cloud based IDEs.
Further, some platforms use proprietary frameworks for app development. Finding skills & resources to support these proprietary frameworks could become tricky in the longer run.
While the adoption of low-code platforms are improving, the developer community is not as wide spread, yet. The community chatter is largely limited to the platform’s community portals and not spilling into wider community forums like stackoverflow.com.
Presence in the Open community forum is vital to hear the wider points of view of the platforms and also for the developers to explore community approved implementation approach. This is crucial for IT Teams to manage and maintain an app ecosystem. These community forums also provide an unbiased view, that’s crucial to understanding the nuances of the platforms/frameworks.
Cloud & Security
Infrastructure and security are important non-functional factors that need to be carefully considered for any platform implementation.
When selecting a low-code platform, an in-depth analysis should be made on deployment models. Many IT organizations are now following the Hybrid Cloud model to manage their workloads. Combining public cloud and private cloud from multiple cloud service providers, provides greater flexibility for organizations — optimizing IT costs, improving performance, ensuring secure access to enterprise data and most importantly complying to data protection regulations like GDPR.
Low-code solutions like Strapi, Hasura etc. can be containerized to support hybrid cloud deployment.
Platforms like Shopify (eCommerce platform), Airtable etc. provide a SaaS or cloud based model. Although these platforms cannot be deployed on-premise.
Implementation approach
It is always prudent to validate the platform-in-consideration or solution through a MVP (Minimum viable product) approach.
Let’s take the example of a Digital Retail Banking engagement — to minimize the risk, a B2E use case could be selected for implementation. Key journeys/use cases like customer on-boarding, account summary, fixed deposits etc. could be first tested & implemented in branch kiosks (B2E). This gives the ability for the IT Team to validate the platform by working with a “controlled” user base (bank staff). Any deviations or refactoring can then be applied to extend the solution for end consumers (B2C).
Remember, end consumers give only once chance at it, and it’s crucial to get it right the first time!
Licensing
It’s imperative to understand the licensing nuances of the low-code platform. In some cases, the costs may swell as the volume increases — could be number of users, peak traffic, number of instances, multi-tenant model etc.
So, a careful study of the licensing model is important before finalizing a low-code platform.
Conclusion
Remember, Low-code is not no-code. There is still coding involved. All software management principles still apply.
With the rise of low-code platforms, large organizations are now looking for one integrated platform to manage their digital presence. As mentioned earlier, while low-code platforms have evolved today, the fitment for low-code should be carefully assessed.
Low-code platform can be a boon for start-ups and for proving concepts quickly. It saves time, importantly budget and enables organizations to take their solutions faster to market. Although, selecting a low-code platform to manage your large mission critical systems is not a trivial decision.
Low-code platforms have come a long way and is here to stay. We live in interesting times and more than ever we are looking to reinvent the way we work. Exploring and validating low-code platforms and having a point-of-view is crucial for IT Teams to be in a better position to implement Digital Transformation engagements.
Thanks for reading!
