How a low-code platform empowers an agile leader to achieve enterprise agility

It’s the time of disruption, where, as an enterprise you need to innovate, adapt, and embrace change quickly.

Processes need to be modified and customized, and teams need to be flexible, lean and agile, to keep up with the changing situation. Enterprise agility has become a necessity and to be agile has become a way of being and working.

What it takes to drive the change that the current situation demands is an agile leader empowered with the right tools. There are several enterprise tools an agile leader can use, from team collaboration programs, communications tools, project management software and other tools required to enable transition to remote working successfully. The widespread adoption of enterprise tools has led to an increasing demand to build enterprise applications.

In times when quick changes are required, you may think how you can transform your enterprise to become agile. One of the ways most companies are empowering teams and driving continuous change is by using low-code platforms to create enterprise applications fast. Let’s take a look at how a low-code/no-code platform can be used as an agile leader’s tool to achieve enterprise agility:

Move Quickly to Respond to Business Needs Using an API-Driven Approach

Agile means to be able to move fast. Speed is essential to business success. The company that moves faster to solve a problem, and creates a product to respond to a need will be the business that wins. Agility is often more achieved when actions are led by aspiration.

Businesses are looking for platforms that reduce cycle times and improve organizational agility by delivering applications at the pace of business. As an enterprise solution delivery, low-code provides rapid application development using WYSIWYG drag and drop feature and offers the ability to edit generated code.

APIs today form the essence of business applications and application architecture. With an API-driven app development approach to integrate Private Cloud and DIY maintenance, most low-code platforms support APIs at best.

• Create and reuse custom components or business logic across applications using reusable API “Prefab” modules and team collaboration capabilities including version control and shared projects.
• Integrate with third party REST APIs with the assurance that the low-code platform provides full lifecycle support including authentication and authorization.
• Enable two-way integration with automatic API creation for existing business logic.

To respond quickly to business needs, using low-code application development platforms with API-driven approach can help you to create auto-responsive apps for websites, tablets, and smartphones at the desired speed.

Embrace Rapid Change by Driving Value

In the face of rapid change and uncertainty, agile leaders thrive. They do this by creating an environment where stakeholders push change forward by driving adoption through frequent, incremental changes that constantly produce value.

According to Gartner, application leaders will need to identify ways to leverage technology and by 2024 the focus of successful application teams will be on how to use technology to meet their customers’ needs and wants.

Teams will need to move from the current focus on the technology of applications to pursue design thinking to foster a culture that sees things from the customer’s perspective. One of the ways to imbibe design thinking in platform strategies is by using rapid application development. Low-code supports all key principles of ‘Design Thinking’ to solve the problem right.

• Low-code lets you Prototype / POC’s to ‘show’ working software to the end users and not just ‘tell’ a story, for early/timely feedback.
• It enables a cross-functional team for radical collaboration bringing their own unique perspectives to solve real problems right.
• It enables you to focus on the process and iterate it for improving.  This can fill the gap that exists in many organizations that have successfully passed through the initial rounds of agility and are looking for a set of practices to help them enter into the third wave of Business Agility.

The premise of solving the right problem, solving it right, and realizing the value at the earliest is best supported using emerging tech such as low-code platforms.

Inspire Creativity and Innovation in Your Employees

Agile is not only a way of working it is also a way of being. Fostering an agile culture in an organization, it’s important to make sure employees have time for creative thinking. It’s not enough to establish methods of automation and develop a cadence of smaller releases, so work is constantly improved upon.

Leaders must inspire creativity and innovation within employees so that they can contribute directly. Low-code allows developers to think and iterate at a granular level, making a big difference in customer satisfaction or cost optimization. What low-code platforms provide is an environment of collaboration where continuous learning culture is nurtured.

• Innovation doesn’t always come from continuous improvements, but also is generated when the norm is shaken up, and the status quo is rapidly improved. Modifying solutions based on customer needs is an innovative approach to change and low-code platforms support modification and customization.
• By using a low-code platform you can have ideas and fresh perspectives from professionals of multiple backgrounds. Therefore, motivating people to learn from each other and collaborate on projects and creating a ‘fun’ environment.
• The backbone of innovation is technology and low-code is rapidly growing to meet the demand for new mobile applications and the possibility of delivering them via the cloud.

Organizational agility is driven by technology teams led by agile leaders. Low-code platforms lets technology teams build enterprise applications substantially faster to meet rapid changing business objectives thus aligning the agility between IT and Business.

Not only can you build leaner and smaller teams who deliver fast, using low-code you can offer a workbench to nurture full-stack developers and create an environment of continuous learning, collaboration, and innovation.

At a time when we need to navigate around the ‘new normal of constant change, the future-proof software stack that a low-code platform  offers is the perfect intuitive toolset that agile leaders need to drive the disruption.

Originally published in Business Matters