Power Platform | Flatten the curve

Aftert talking in my previous article about Power Platform being a booster for Azure Services, I thought this time of the year it is also an opportunity to look back on achievements and key learnings. Being a Global Blackbelt Architect around Power Platform, it still is an honor to participate in any of the customer’s Cloud Transformation projects, discussing with them governance, security, adoption or purely architectural design topics with them. A lot of these projects starting by envisioning around the opportunities given these days. Some of them continue with a Cloud Assessment on current (as-is) application and process landscape. Back in February, I was already talking about it in my article on „The new Cloud Transformation„.

Today, I´d like to reuse a claim or slogan that we got used to via news channels during the last two years – flattening the curve. Of course this pandemic disrupted the economy in a way that no one really could have predicted. Still we´re in the early post era and have to deal with the challenges across the globe. From building more resilient supply chains, to massively needed investments into saving our planet while dealing with inflation or even hyperinflation, to ensuring everyone participating from the benefits of digital transformation and doesn´t feel disconnected on that journey.

„Flatten the curve“ was a claim used by our local german politicians when them introducing their COVID-19 fighting programs and asked the citizen to face the challenges and perform actions to tackle the pandemic. Today, I am using it in a different context, asking everyone of you again to flatten the curve when it´s about app or process modernization and yours planning your future career and job perspectives. It starts by transforming job roles, becoming a kind of developer assessing your current app and process landscape and build your inventory. And it ends by building the business case including the new opportunities and benefits that comes with low-code being used by yours to do more with less.

Looking at the visual above, you see a typical curve around traditional software development and the coding building blocks at the left. In comparison to the right, you do find a flattened curve that shows less code complexity on the y-axis and a faster time to market possible by using low-code toolsets on the x-axis. It shows two peaks instead of one high to climb – significantly lower to traditional software development that starts by adopting low-code as another toolset for your fusion teams development.

While less „complex“ code seems obvious, when talking about low-code, less time-to-market isn´t obvious for many I´ve been talking to and still there´re a lot of fear, myths and provisos around, when it comes to using low-code. So let me start by saying, the main benefit is around your style of coding and creation process. As an example: While using traditional software development you may need to take care of software security and vulnarability inside your code. This forces code changes to adopt to new challenges or security mechanism. Think of a project where single-sign-on became a must for your mobile app while disconnected to your company network. You may say now that with low-code there´s no difference. Well, there is! The majority of the work is done for you! By Microsoft for example when using Power Platform. This is due to its SaaS architecture. Using low-code, it therefore becomes a lot easier to deal with security and vulnerability. A lot of that will be done for yours by Microsoft optimizing its service in the background and yours simply re-publishing a low-code asset to benefit from this.

Another reason developers taking into account low-code for their app- and process modernization today are:

• Unrivaled time to value
• Doing more with less
• New way of thinking about software development and IT service delivery

So let me reuse a visual that I´ve shown in my article from February and this time highlight where Power Platform or low-code could play a significant role during your app or process modernization efforts.

Last time, I was talking about this example given by a customer who considers migrating their app- and business process landscape to cloud and obviously thought carefully about the „how to?“. When talking to customers and revisiting their Cloud Assessment, today we can inject the benefits of low-code to the highlighted area (green gradient). But it doesn´t stop there. Furthermore, there´s a potential of Power Platform being used for augmenting or extending legacy apps as well which falls in the bucket above.

Today, Fusion development teams assess their app- and process modernization against many more KPIs than traditionally. Some of them are:

• User experience becoming poor due to user stories being picked-up incorrectly
• Various coding faults or attempts needed in software development phase
• Unreliable estimation of project budgets
• Challenges around testing
• Delays around infrastructure

Compared to this, them taking into account the benefits of using low-code for app- and process modernization. Those mainly being around:

• Faster time to market, delivery and maintenance of apps or processes
• Significant cost savings
• A better customer or collaboration experience (collaborative apps)
• Security without compromise
• Assists in the elimination of „Shadow IT“
• Fusion Teams and stronger collaboration between business and information technology
• Incentives for digital transformation adoption

It therefore shouldn´t be no suprise that when reviewing my previous used visual that outlines the three phases of making a business case for app- and process modernization – today, I would highlight the modernization stack from phase II that should be revisited and thoughtful reviewed in terms of the benefits of using Power Platform low-code as an orchestrated platform.

The shift and progress in software development already matured over the last two years and if your company, your software development department or your IT professionals managing DevOps tasks haven´t yet adopted, accelerated or opted-in for low-code, their future strategy and roadmap may contain business blockers. Although low-code tools like Power Platform will not replace professional developers, business users with low-code tools are likely to cause some changes in IT professional roles. According to recent Gartner news:

“Organizations are increasingly turning to low-code development technologies to fulfill growing demands for speed application delivery and highly customized automation workflows,”

said Varsha Mehta, Senior Market Research Specialist at Gartner.

Not saying low-code is the only option – instead assessing that without low-code becoming part of your IT and software development strategy, you may lack in being future ready and adopting rapidly to the next wave of challenges. Not sure where it takes me next year – and I was often asked „Where do you see yourself in the next 5 years?“ in my business career, but I am sure low-code tools won´t be far away from what I will be doing.

Wishing a joy- and peaceful holiday season with beloved ones. May your whishes become true. Until then, …