2955: Mendix and the Future of Low-Code Development

[00:00:00] How can enterprises effectively manage the explosive growth of low-code platforms, with a global low-code platform market poised to grow significantly, and indeed developers outside formal IT departments accounting for the vast majority of the user base? Today I'm joined once again by Nick Ford, Chief Growth Officer at Mendix.

[00:00:24] He last joined us, I think he was in June 2021. And today he's joining me once again to discuss the intricacies of low-code adoption and the balance between innovation and governance. I'm hoping Nick's going to share some insights on how enterprises can better leverage low-code

[00:00:42] to drive digital transformation, while also maintaining oversight and avoiding the pitfalls of uncontrolled application development. From governance and policy alignment to the critical role of fusion teams, we'll explore today what it takes to harness the full potential of low-code platforms.

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[00:02:04] That's right, that's kiteworks.com to get started today. But now, time to get today's guest on. So buckle up and hold on tight as I beam your ears all the way to London where Nick Ford is waiting to join us on the podcast.

[00:02:18] Once again, as we delve into how organizations can thrive in this rapidly evolving landscape. So a massive warm welcome to the show, Nick. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Well, first of all, thanks for having me. I'm Nick Ford.

[00:02:37] I'm the Chief Growth Officer for Mendix. My role is predominantly I look after everything that's go-to-market that isn't sales. So that's marketing, customer success or customer lifetime value, et cetera, and enablement. So generally on the sort of go-to-market side, but not the sales teams.

[00:02:59] Well a big warm welcome to the show. And one of the things that I always enjoy doing on here is talking about areas that maybe people are talking a lot about in business and not knowing or cautious about what move to make next.

[00:03:12] Yes, we've talked a lot about AI on here, but something I want to talk about today is the low-code platform market because that's expected to grow significantly too. So my question to you is just to set the scene for our conversation today is how can enterprises

[00:03:27] ensure that they manage that growth effectively while maintaining all that boring IT stuff like oversight and governance? Yeah, it's interesting. It's a bit of a, I suppose, a dilemma because part of the proposition behind low-code is

[00:03:42] to move at speed and to adapt and innovate and do all the things that typically we've not been that good at when it comes to building software over the years. So it's a balance between trying to create and continue innovation without stifling it.

[00:03:57] And that's always very difficult for many organizations to navigate. My experience is that what you have to do is to certainly to open up a little bit and relax a little bit when it comes to the rules to ensure that you can get sort of bottoms up development.

[00:04:14] It is a term called citizen developers, so people within the business with skills who can turn ideas into software to give them the tools to be able to start to innovate. But you can't do that without really creating some level of guardrails.

[00:04:29] So what kinds of applications will they innovate on? What data, where does that come from? So it's a real balance between ensuring you've got the right level of sort of policy and management of individuals, sort of guardrails through which you can curate how applications

[00:04:44] are developed, but also unleash a little bit to ensure that people feel like they have the opportunity to start to take these tools and really drive bottoms up innovation. Maybe talk a little bit about how that happens later.

[00:04:58] That fine balance between the two is often very difficult to navigate in the first instance, but it is certainly achievable. And I agree with everything you said there and it is a real balancing act.

[00:05:11] And I suspect that you've seen more than a few examples in your time of what goes wrong when that balance is not achieved. So what are some of the most common risks or mistakes associated with bottom up development in low code platforms?

[00:05:23] And how can enterprises avoid and mitigate these risks? Well, I think the biggest problem is that once you give individuals tools to go and solve business problems themselves, what they go and do is solve business problems themselves. So they're off to the races. They're using this new technology.

[00:05:40] They're solving the problems for themselves day to day. And you very quickly get sort of spread. We all remember the days of where Excel was used to solve many problems. It probably wasn't designed to be used for, but it took off and many applications of Excel

[00:05:56] being used for perhaps solving their own problems. The same can be said of low code. And what you have to do is make sure that when you start with a bottoms up movement and you start to use citizen developers, and citizen developer is really an individual

[00:06:10] has a day job. So citizen developers are their marketers, their ops people, their finance people, and they now have a new tool and a new capability. So they're wanting to use that. And what typically happens, you get very rapid proliferation of applications.

[00:06:25] The challenge with that is that they often go ungoverned. And there's a lot of duplication. So typically, if you're sitting inside the finance department or sitting inside the marketing department, you may well be solving some of the same problem at the same time.

[00:06:38] And so you get these pockets of sort of innovation happening, but they're not well curated together. So duplication, perhaps potential risk of data, rapid proliferation of applications across the business. And to a certain extent, you start to lose some control over that. So it's a great initiative.

[00:06:58] And it certainly drives innovation rapidly. But that's one of the major problems. I think the challenge also with a citizen developer is that they're not typically IT people. So they see the world through the lens of a specific business problem, rather than

[00:07:12] seeing the world through a lens of technology where you might think about how do I embed best practices or reuse into building the app? They're really interested in solving this one problem. So I've often seen that bottoms up initiative can very quickly start to run

[00:07:29] into the sort of laws of diminishing returns where it starts off, you change one parameter, things get very, very rapidly, very good. And then over time, the returns start to be made and show that typically the challenges that we've seen over the years.

[00:07:44] And as an ex-IT guy, I have to come back again to things like governance and policy alignment in managing low-code platform growth. So how curious is that, especially concerning security risks and regulatory compliance? Yes. Well, I think, you know, depending on the organization, they can be very

[00:08:03] stringent, right? If you're a bank or an insurance company, regulation or public sector, it's very high on the agenda. So typically, you know, what we tend to find is that that starts with application and portfolio management.

[00:08:17] Really what you've got to start doing as a CIO or an organization that's looking to use low-code or multiple technologies for that matter to build software rapidly is to start to sort of manage the intake and look at what kinds of

[00:08:32] applications you're building, then wrap policy guidelines and governance around the application portfolio. So for me, what we encourage many dev leaders or CIOs to look at is what's coming to you as a business, what's part of your transformational agenda?

[00:08:49] How do you start to manage some of the softer side of that, the intake of those applications? How do you get an understanding of the sort of value and perhaps the potential risk of those applications? What kinds of data are they looking at?

[00:09:01] How secure do they need to be? And then you start to move those applications through the development lifecycle according to a set of policies and governance, which may well see different types of teams come together. There's this concept of fusion teams that brings together business users with

[00:09:19] subject matter expertise, with IT users to solve these problems collectively. It's where we get that sort of melding pot of ideal use case scenarios with people who understand IT. And some of those applications need to be navigated through that channel, whereas

[00:09:34] all applications that maybe aren't quite as risk heavy or require the due diligence can perhaps go through a separate channel. So we'd certainly advocate taking a look at sort of portfolio management and putting those processes of governance, guardrails and policy management right at

[00:09:50] that level so that when it filters into the organization, you've already got it covered and you're not starting to sort of see its groundswell from the bottoms up and then trying to get your arms around it to a later date, which becomes very, very difficult to do.

[00:10:05] And when doing a little research on you, I was really how there are four elements that are needed to thrive in a multi-platform strategy. And I think they were oversight, curation, governance and policy management.

[00:10:16] But for anyone that's not seen that, can you expand on that and why it's so important? Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I covered a little bit in a previous response. And you have to look at the world through those four elements.

[00:10:26] And I liken the sort of bottoms up groundswell of innovation with low-cost platform very welcome. Most organizations have really taken to that. What you see for a large part in most organizations is that they're starting to really get that groundswell.

[00:10:42] But it's a bit like, you come home from holiday and there's a bit of a burst pipe in the ceiling, water's flooding through the building. The first thing you don't do is you don't go and start trying to mop up all the water.

[00:10:52] What you need to do is to go to the source and start to put in those sort of four key elements that you just talked about and make sure that actually when you're creating your portfolio, you're looking at the world of digital

[00:11:04] transformation through the lens of application development holistically across the business, that you've got all four of those elements covered. And that really for me starts with seriously understanding and getting your arms around your portfolio of solutions and applications in a multi-platform strategy.

[00:11:21] What that might mean is that actually there are certain low-cost platforms that are very good at delivering enterprise, mission-critical, robust, and secure solutions. But equally, there are technologies that may be low or no-co that are ideally suited for building out more of those citizen development bottoms up

[00:11:39] departmental solutions. So once you've got that portfolio together, you can very quickly start to push these solutions through the various different channels across the organization to make sure that they're being delivered with the right technology, using the right mix

[00:11:54] of people, that we're not stifling innovation by overly imposing governance models on top of applications that perhaps don't need the extreme levels of governance. But we are with those mission-critical, customer-facing, regulatory compliance, we are really implementing those key elements of managing a portfolio there.

[00:12:15] So I think once you've got your understanding of your intake, you've got your understanding of your landscape, it's then about how you use guardrails and policy management to start to push application development through the right

[00:12:28] channels to the right people and give them the right tools to achieve their goals. And if we do have any CIOs listening today that want to break down silos, increase efficiency, and determine the value of low-code applications to the

[00:12:43] business and ensure that the potential for reuse across multiple departments, any advice on how they can do that? Yeah, I think what you have to do is you have to realize that software development is a team sport.

[00:12:58] It's something that happens when you get all the right participants onto the pitch and they all understand their position on the page and they all work together with a common objective. And that means bringing in subject matter experts from the business,

[00:13:14] bringing in operational experts, bringing in soft developers, IT, design, UX, and creating an environment where those teams can work together cross-functionally. Gartner called them fusion teams. And inside that, you have various different roles. You have things like your product owner.

[00:13:32] But even inside the sort of development elements of those fusion teams, you sort of have three kinds of roles that are emerging. You have typically citizen developers or these bottoms-up developers who can use technology to start to build certain parts or elements of applications.

[00:13:48] You then have business technologists, which are typically IT professionals that succumbed into the business. They sit in the business. They care about the business. And they're probably very business savvy, but they see the world through the lens of IT. So they look at reuse.

[00:14:03] They look at how they can use their technology to solve more than one problem across the business, whereas citizen developers are very much looking at that specific problem. And then you bring professional developers into the mix as well.

[00:14:14] There's a combination of all of those skills that comes together to really get software running at speed. And one thing I'd say about local platforms, the reason we call them local is that you do have the opportunity to bring in high code as well.

[00:14:28] Sometimes you may already have an investment in high code. So we don't preclude those from coming into these fusion teams. So for me, it's about creating the right team structure and then giving them the right dynamics, which is the policy management, portfolio management,

[00:14:44] and then allowing them some freedom to go experiment and to build. And never be too far away from turning around. We like people to make mistakes, and we always talk about learning through failure. But if you're starting to use an agile methodology, make it relatively iterative.

[00:15:01] You're never too far away from the last problem where you can unravel and go back again. So really, it's easy to say and hard to do. And I fully acknowledge that fact. And so it's important that when you're partnering with organizations,

[00:15:14] you're looking at things like not just the technology but the methodology that that organization brings to the table to help you to build that right level of structure inside the organization. 100 percent, it really is a team sport.

[00:15:27] And if we do turn our attention to those guarding the purse strings, while increasing demanding metrics like ROI and business value from every tech project, what long term investments should enterprises be making in workflows, governance and oversight to build this sustainable low code program we're talking about? Absolutely.

[00:15:48] It's a must in my book. I think what we've seen is as our business has evolved, is we've seen very much a groundswell of organizations looking at low code platforms to solve these kinds of problems. But it still does amaze me that many organizations still haven't got

[00:16:05] a clear understanding of what is the value of the portfolio of applications you're creating? What is the value to the business in terms of monetary value? What is the value in terms of speed in which you can bring those applications to market, which might be an opportunity value?

[00:16:20] But what is the actual value of actually reducing the footprint of physical resources and person time to get those applications over the line? So rather than looking very one dimensionally at this sort of return on investment when it comes to these kinds of platforms,

[00:16:39] it's important that CIOs take a very holistic view. Looking at the speed of engineering, looking at the opportunity cost, looking at the actual value of the resulting application or portfolio application when it comes to moving the needle as far as their transformational agenda is concerned.

[00:16:56] But also what does it mean to customers? Better user experiences, launching new products, making existing systems and processes more efficient. It's multi-dimensional and it takes a fair bit of time to sort of start to analyze every aspect of that.

[00:17:13] I'm going to come back to something I've said several times throughout this presentation or this discussion, and that is you really have to get a handle on your portfolio. What is it that you're building? And capture all that information up front.

[00:17:26] Once you have all of that, you can then refer back to it at a later date and say, look, did this investment we made, did it really return what we expected? Now, was it a good investment? Would I place my bets somewhere else?

[00:17:38] But unless you capture that information inside a technology stack and refer back to it, it's very difficult to really, truly assess the return of this kind of technology, particularly if it comes bottoms up. At Mendix, you guys are considered the low-code platform that turns ideas into outcomes.

[00:17:57] But for people that are listening, and I'm conscious of maybe hearing about you for the first time, can you expand on how Mendix helps in eliminating things like duplicate work and ensuring that the right teams create the right applications within an enterprise?

[00:18:11] And if you can share on that, just to bring it to life a little. Yeah, I mean, we've been around for many years. I mean, you'd argue that we sort of pioneered and set up the low-code movement.

[00:18:20] So all the way through that and the beginnings of the business are really our DNA was about business and IT collaboration. So first of all, I want to say is that the problem we're trying to solve is not to eradicate code, but it's to say there's a better,

[00:18:35] more efficient way of bringing this team together to build code. So sorry, to build applications more effectively and more efficiently. And what we've done as we've gone through the development of our platform is to focus very heavily on collaborative work,

[00:18:51] which means you've got to recognize that not everybody is a professional developer, but you do want them to participate in the development process. So we've baked into our technology the ability for those teams to collaborate first and foremost.

[00:19:04] Then what we've done is we've built a series of what we call sort of reusable components and assets within our platform, which means that you can have multiple different participants building on the same core software and everyone has their own role.

[00:19:20] What we then do is based on the policy and the governance of what you're able to do in the platform means that you can do certain things, but you can't do others. So that reuse element is not just reusing existing components,

[00:19:32] but it's also making sure that actually within that development consortium that you have your clear roles and responsibilities. Then we're looking at things like the ability to be able to use either public or enterprise app stores. Great example would be that you're building

[00:19:51] multiple different applications across your business. You want to make sure that your brand is consistent, make sure that your fonts, your colors, the way that screens load, how you present your applications, which seems relatively trivial on the face of it.

[00:20:05] But I can tell you when you've got hundreds of people building applications, those kind of things go sideways very quickly. So bringing in reusable components at that level, bringing in the ability to be able to automate single sign-on, for example.

[00:20:18] We also have the concept of sort of adaptable software, which means you can ship working software and you can secure probably 80% of that and only allow developers to model around the 20%, which means that core 80% could be lifted and shifted across multiple applications.

[00:20:35] So combination of multiple different factors from APIs to reusable components to the guardrails that manage what individuals can do within these Fusion teams means that you've got this really nice environment for ensuring that we're not tripping over each other and we're not duplicating effort.

[00:20:50] Once it's tied back to the portfolio, we can tie it back to value. And then you've got a real sort of mature environment for the full application development lifecycle from ideation right the way through to applications running either live internally or customer face.

[00:21:07] And I think that most businesses often fall into the trap of thinking that they're unique, they've got many bespoke applications, their needs are complex, but very often most businesses are very similar when you break it all down and zoom out.

[00:21:20] How do you at Mendex address the full complexity of enterprise software development challenges? I suspect you've got more than a few war stories, especially when supporting transformational initiatives, etc. But anything you can share around that? Yeah, yeah. Well, it comes back to having a single platform,

[00:21:39] you know, and looking at not just the development side of building software. As we've said a couple of times, it is a team sport, which means you've got to look at how all of those participants come together,

[00:21:52] the rules of engagement and how they work together with a common technology, common understanding, a common way of people communicating across those teams because not everybody is a development expert and not everybody is a subject matter expert.

[00:22:04] So what we've done in our technology is ensure that from right the initial idea to the working piece of software that gets deployed onto a native mobile device in the browser on a physical machine running at the edge of manufacturing,

[00:22:19] that the entire lifecycle management is managed within a single platform, which means you have one environment where we can bring that fusion team together with the ability and multiple tools to collaborate across that. And we can follow a thread from an idea that might be a user story

[00:22:34] in a particular piece of software can be followed as a single thread all the way through the development process until it appears live in an application and we have feedback from that. So it's about understanding the disciplines, bringing fusion teams together,

[00:22:48] making sure that technology is a common platform. But it's open enough to provide all of the tools and capability that a pro developer might need, a citizen developer might need, a business technology lead might need, a UX designer might need. But there's a common thread across that.

[00:23:04] And that's very, very hard to achieve. And it's taken us many years of maturing our platform to get to a level where we believe that sort of at the enterprise level, we are very much capable of sort of becoming an enterprise local platform that takes on the complexity

[00:23:21] of turning those ideas into outcomes. Now, whether that's strategic mission critical software or that's a portfolio of bottoms up citizen development department systems, they all need to be managed and curated. But the one thing that's the common thread for me is it's all about collaboration and communication.

[00:23:37] If you can solve that, you can get these teams working together. You'd be amazed just how what incredible things organizations can achieve and what sort of time frames and at what cost. Well, I can't thank you enough for joining me on the podcast today,

[00:23:52] sharing your insights, but we'll have a bit of fun with you now and ask you to leave everyone listening with one final gift. And that is we've got a Spotify playlist. Always ask my guests to leave a song that we can add to that.

[00:24:05] Guilty pleasures are more than welcome. But all I'm going to ask is, what would you like to add and why? Well, I've been listening to a song called Cumberland Gap. It's an old folk song. You may never have heard of it.

[00:24:17] David Rawlings is the version I'm listening to. I'm not entirely sure he wrote the song. But the history behind this is my son is a real film buff, sort of budding young actor. And so we almost watch a movie a night

[00:24:29] and have been doing for the last sort of 14 years he's been alive. And and, you know, it's the beginning track from a wonderful film called The Gentleman, Guy Ritchie film. And it's it's just a lovely piece of music.

[00:24:48] And so, yeah, I've been listening to that quite a lot of the over the last few weeks. Oh, what a great song. I know the one you mean as well. It's a great film. So I've got to add it straight to a Spotify playlist.

[00:24:59] And of course, we talked a lot about everything Mendix today, the work you're doing. If anyone's listening, wants to just find out more about that or indeed ask you or your team a question or two, where would you like to point everyone?

[00:25:10] Well, you can come and find his best place to go is to our website, www.mendix.com. And from there, you'll find all access to our social media channels. Oh, you'll find a lot about us. There's resumes for most of the leadership team there,

[00:25:24] but probably the best place to come, come and engage with us. And we'd love to love to hear from you and perhaps come and help you out. Well, for me, there's so many big takeaways from our conversation today about thriving in a multi-platform strategy.

[00:25:38] Four elements are needed oversight, curation, governance and policy management and also why CIOs must consider the software needed. It's value to the business and its potential for reuse across departments. And of course, as the IT guy, governance should focus on eliminating

[00:25:55] duplicate work, ensuring the right teams create the right applications and managing a full spectrum software portfolio across an entire enterprise. That is the tricky bit that I've seen many fail over the years. But more than anything, just thank you for shining a light on this important topic today.

[00:26:11] In my pleasure, Neil. Thanks for having me. So as Nick highlighted, the journey of low code adoption is filled with both opportunities and challenges. And it's that fine, delicate balance of balancing the innovative drive for citizen developers with the necessary governance and oversight.

[00:26:28] It's these things that are key to sustainable success. But thank you for listening and joining this enlightening discussion. And as I always say, this is not a monologue, it's a dialogue. So I ask you, how do you see the future of low code platforms shaping your industry?

[00:26:44] Share your thoughts with me. Tech blog writer outlook dot com LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, just at Neil C Hughes. I'd love to hear your thoughts. But that's it for today. I'll be back bright and early tomorrow with another insightful conversation

[00:26:57] here on tech talks daily, but a completely different topic. Hopefully you'll join me again. So thank you for listening as always. And until next time, don't be a stranger.