Bits & Bytes Vol. 3

Low-Code Applied: An All-In-One Approach to Software Development.Mr. Joe Carroll

As you evaluate low-code platforms to help you accelerate your application development and delivery,it’s important to understand the history of low-code,which began in the 1980s but didn’t come to prominence until companies like Mendix harnessed the business-altering power of low-code.

Initially, low-code was about model-driven development: abstracting programming and using visual models for defining data models, application and process logic, and user interfaces. Mendix took this astep further, believing that low-code was the way to bridge the gap between IT and the business.In 2014 we wrote that Mendix’s approach to model-driven development was that “it empowers both developers and business users to rapidly build applications without the need for labor-intensive, low-level coding.”

Obviously, we’re not in 2014 anymore and neither should be your low-code platform. Low-code technology has matured beyond just building an application. So when evaluating a low-code platform,you’ll want to choose a vendor whose platform allows you to apply the low-code philosophy to other areas of software development. Or, as Forrester suggests in their latest “Forrester Wave: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021,” look for a platform that addresses data- and process-centric development patterns, provides development tools across a range of developer skills, and meets enterprise-level architectural and infrastructural requirements.

Mr. Joe Carroll

Find it All in One Low-Code Platform

In order for a business to truly accelerate its software delivery, low-code can’t just be applied to the “Build” or “Develop” part of the software lifecycle. The concept of radical abstraction and automation you find low-code addressing in the world of development needs to apply to software’s adjacent domains.

Process Automation

Businesses run on processes. It’s alarming when you read Forrester’s report “Navigating the Rapid App Delivery Market” and see that 77 percent of enterprises are relying on clunky paper processes and 63 percent rely on Excel-type programs.A robust low-code platform offers you the ability toinsert process logic into applications that digitize or automate those paper or spreadsheet driven processes.

Forrester counts tooling for process automation as a chief capability or feature for current low-code offerings. Among the 14 vendors assessed in the Forrester Wave: Low-Code Development Platforms for Professional Developers, Q2 2021, Mendix scored a 3.3 out of 5. The Mendix Platform provides users Workflow, a BPMN-based visual process editor found in both IDEs (Studio and Studio Pro) that lets you infuse process logic into your scalable applications.Furthermore, you’ll find pre-integrated support for RPA tools, and app services for intelligent automation like document processing, data capturing, and natural language processing.

With Mendix you can power up your applications by integrating AI capabilities through configurable drag-and-drop AI services (Amazon, Google, IBM, to name a few) or find third-party offerings in the Market place for specialized AI services.

Data Integration

The discovery and use of data across your enterprise is also a point of frustration when it comes to building applications.Tooling for data modeling and management,particularly its data catalog is exceptional in both features and experience.Low-code applied to data integration empowers developers to discover, understand, and instantly connect data, even in the most complex of enterprise data landscapes. If you have the right low-code platform, those connections will be easily governed and appropriately secured.

Forrester also recognizes the need for data and integrations as crucial to a modern low-code platform.Mendix scored 5 out of 5 in this category.Forrester found Mendix’s data tooling impressive.According to the report, Mendix’s “tooling for data modeling and management—particularly its data catalog—is exceptional in both features and experience.”

Within Mendix Studio Pro, you get a single view of multiple data sources so that you can read, write and update operations. Data modeling through the Domain Modeler lets you visually create new data models and store new data persistently.

With the latest addition to the Mendix product family,Data Hub, you get composite data views from myriad data sources from your data landscape. The Mendix Data Hub Catalog is an open, standards-based meta data repository that enables a range of developers to find,understand, and activate data.

Mendix offers hundreds of pre-built connectors and the ability to build more through the Connector Kit. DataHub abstracts away connectors while fully automating mapping queries and invocations with simple, drag-and-drop integration.

User Experience

Delivering a low-code built application to market faster means nothing if it’s not going to be used or—worse yet—if it’s going to have a negative impact. User experience (understandable design patterns and an easy-to-use interface) is vital to the success of your application.

Meeting the user where they want to be met is vital to an application’s success.Google states that 48% ofconsumers who encounter sites designed without mobile in mind reported feeling frustrated. 74% of those who visit a mobile-friendly site are likely to return, with 67% likely to buy that site’s product or service.

A low-code platform should offer tooling that allows you to deliver best-of-breed experiences that are consistent, user-friendly, and multi-channel across mobile, wearables, AR/VR, or chat.Further cementing itself as a true, holistic low-code platform, Mendix’s tooling for user experience and its offering in the multiexperience realm is a standout.Forrester scored Mendix’s UX tooling a 5 out of 5.With Mendix, you can create rich, web-based apps with responsive UIs and build with best-of-breed mobile architectures all from within the same low-code IDEs.

Mendix offers controls, style sheets, and built-in layouts or templates and they’re all customizable as well as reusable. Atlas UI is a fully responsive UI framework that comes replete with a theme creator,navigation layouts, page templates, and pre-designed building blocks. This out-of-the-box capability empowers you to govern your brand. You can build your own design language, brand assets, and reusable components and modules that ensure that those building solutions adhere to branding guidelines.

User experience goes beyond look-and-feel though.This is why Mendix,a leader in the multi experience development platform category, offers tools to help build native mobile applications that ensure you can develop apps that work when and where users want them to work. You can choose the mobile architecture that best fits your business.(native, web, PWA,hybrid).

Mendix’s All-in-One Low-Code Platform

With the right low-code platform—one that offers deep data, process, and UX tooling, you can bridge the gap between IT and the business. Read more about which modern low-code platform can help you accelerate the development and delivery of business-critical applications.

Aqians, Are We? Mr. Salah Nahl. PMO Director.

AQ, or adversity quotient, can be defined as a measure of one's resilience and adaptability. The term was coined by author Paul Stoltz in 1997 in his book Adversity Quotient. Though it was defined over 20 years ago, it’s just now beginning to gain traction in business circles, and many prominent figures believe it’s more critical than IQ or EQ when it comes to professional success.

Furthermore, AQ stands to become highly required in many areas of life where individuals / firms face adversities such as competition, financial crisis,pandemics, natural catastrophe & so on.There are various examples for giants used to dominate their own industries, now defeated, and simply ran out of business due to absence of AQ only (Kodak,Blackberry, Nokia, Blockbuster, RadioShack…etc.).Kodak as others mentioned above wasted time on promoting the use of existing products instead of emulating its competitors. Steve Sasson, the Kodak engineer who invented the first digital camera in 1975,characterized the initial corporate response to his invention this way: ‘that’s cute—but don’t tell anyone about it.’!!

Now and since February 2020, COV-19 have turned all industries upside down, not once but multiple times as consumers respond to evolving situation; produced huge challenges for financial, supply chain, and transportation sectors worldwide. Companies and Financial firms moved rapidly to deploy digital and automation technologies, dramatically accelerating trends that were unfolding at a much slower pace before the crisis. Work went remote, shopping,entertainment, and even medicine went online, and businesses everywhere scrambled to deploy digital systems to accommodate the shifts.

Mr. Salah Nahl
PMO Director, KASP

Now, the obvious question would be. Are you an AQian? The quick-thinking answer will always be ‘yes’ though we need to put more thoughts into that and simulate the case. Using same Kodak case visualize you are on the executive table on 1975 evaluating digital camera concept! We ought to be reasonable and admit that it’s not an easy nor comfort decision though it proved to be the correct one after all.There are several steps that can be practiced helping reach correct decision while maintaining resilience.

• Study competitors regardless of there present market shares. What the new players are doing and to think of ways to insure your company / firm against this new competition. Outsider perspective and opinions that contradict traditional wisdom should be studied, rather than dismissed.
• Review your inherited certain assumptions. Don’t be afraid to challenge even some of the most firmly held assumptions about the way your industry functions. Bring in outsiders with fresh perspective. Work to collaborate on what could be the “false knowns” of your industry.You could be among the first in your industry to question them and start changing the game.
• Be permanently alert to new technologies that can help you adapt quickly and meet evolving customer needs.
• See It. Acknowledge change is needed.
• Own It. Take ownership of the situation.
• Solve It. Develop your action plan.
• Do It. Execute the change.
• Systemize a process by which you update, correct,and rework above steps.

Work From Home, The Extra Time At Hand! Mr. Hasan Syed. Sr. Erp Consultant.

One must adapt to the ever changing times, failing tovdo so will only hinder achievements and success. Thisvis not only applicable to the forever changing world of Information Technology but to almost every other field out there. There are a number of examples of conglomerates who vanished into oblivion due to their rigidness.

It has been over a year now since the world has been affected in every way after being hit by the pandemic.Those who could see the light at the end of the tunnel thrusted and clinged on to that beam of hope in the darkness and pioneered. Around the world the economies, business and humanity suffered, the world had been bruised and battered. This all had to be healed and nourished back to life resulting in out of the box ideas to survive and to live with the pandemic because the Show must go on!.

Work From Home is a topic where 50-50 percentage people support and embrace it amicably while others find it a breach of their privacy and personal time respectively. Well, in my opinion as long as the work ethics are maintained and a very high level of professionalism is observed then WFH will only set onto be the best example of work-life balance.

Let me share my personal experience that might relax the perspective of many out there and might comfort them by taking into account certain things which are only possible when one works from home especially given the current scenarios.

Mr. Hasan Syed
Sr. ERP Consultant, KASP

There are definitely some pre-requisites to liking the WFH idea, being a family person tops the list followed by highly professional colleagues which make WFH easier. Moving on, when the pandemic derailed everyone and everything, I too was affected by it drastically. I was parted with my family not to mention my two year old daughter. It was a tough, challenging and a sheer test of will for me, this phase of 10 months did enable many personal developments. Pressing skip on the 10 month wait, when we reunited, the blessingnot-in-disguise was clearly “work from home”. It wasthen things became clear of what actually work lifebalance meant. Those bloggers and motivational speakers out there made sense finally. Iam experiencing something that one could only wish for.However, what is crucial to enjoy and maintain thisbalance is to be organized and strictly professionalwithout which you will not only succumb to the fear ofresuming the normal work life but also have a load of personal and professional overdue tasks. In every work environment the absence of ethics and sincerity will only lead to a disastrous breakdown both professionally and personally and will cripple the team. We simply cannot clap effectively with one hand similarly, as much as it is the duty of an employee to be honest and committed to his work during the working hours, an equal responsibility lies at the employers end to enable this continuously healthy response from all the employees.

I would like to conclude with a thought provoking statement by William Barclay “There are two great days in a person’s life - the day we are born and the day we discover why?” So with all that extra time at hand while most of us practice WFH, it is now or never to discover your why.

Importance Of Work-Life Balance.Mr. Mohammad Fazahir. Sr. Bi Consultant.

We often assume that work-life balance as the approach to maintain an equal number of hours between work and play. But it’s not!

Having a well-balanced work-life is not only about coming to and returning from working on time. In a broader perspective, it’s about prioritizing things as per their importance. Though it is important for employees,it also affects the organization. Employees who can put equal importance on their well-being are undoubtedly happier and more satisfied. And this does reflect in their performance and behavior at work because those who enjoy a great work-life balance are also the potential advocates of their respective organizations.

“Balance is not better time management, but bettervboundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.”

Mr. Mohammad Fazahir
Sr. Bi Consultant, KASP

While trying to put hundred percent of our effort into the work we do to achieve the desired output and stay within the deadline, we ignore taking time off between work. The human body is not designed to endure for long hours at a go. Taking short breaks will help recover from fatigue and enhance agility at work. In addition to this, proper time management and planning the day to day activities is also effective in maintaining healthy work-life balance.

In today’s time, vacation is no longer a luxury, it’s more of a necessity. We need to also realize how vacations from work have become an important part of today’s work culture. Employees feel more rejuvenated and relaxed after returning to work, yielding better productivity.

One may face different situations that could disrupt the usual schedule and maintaining this balance isn't that hard if you set your things based on priority.“Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.”