Low-code application development
Forrester describes low-code development as "Products and/or cloud services for application development that employ visual, declarative techniques instead of programming…" This development is exactly what Pega has been doing for 30 years — creating Software That Writes Your Software™.
As you manipulate and expand the visual model, the low-code development tools create the code for you. User interface capabilities such as drag-and-drop, process flows, and visual tools allow anyone to create transformational software regardless of technical ability. This approach enables increased productivity, as everyday app development tasks are streamlined, lessening IT involvement. Low-code tools make application development simpler.
Traditional development tools present applications as text heavy-code, as shown in the following image:
In contrast, Low-code development tools provide a visual environment to create applications, as shown in the following image:
The value of low code
Creating powerful software is vital to organizations as the need for rapid transformation outpaces the traditional one-size-fits-all approach, where large teams of developers build proprietary solutions. Low-code application development platforms help bridge the gap between business stakeholders and skilled developers, creating a common visual language to collaborate more effectively. Teams that work with low-code tools are more agile, deliver value more rapidly, and work with stakeholders more effectively. Collaborating with stakeholders in a common visual language allows you to focus on explaining the business logic rather than the code. With shortened feedback loops, teams become more productive, freeing limited resources to tackle the ever-expanding backlog of projects.
Building with low code tools
Many users think that a simple, easy to understand visual development tool is limited to creating very simple applications, on par with something you could implement in a spreadsheet. Pega's low-code platform can be used to create very robust applications in a myriad of channels. For example, a marketing team uses a shared spreadsheet to capture and track requests. Using the low-code tools in Pega Platform™, the marketing team can build an email and web-based request system with reporting for request visibility, notifications for collaboration, and service level agreement (SLA) tracking to ensure that work is finished on time.
Pega's low-code technology allows you to build an application that captures data and initiates business processes. What might surprise you is the application can be a web page, a mobile application, or a chatbot that interacts with your client over Facebook messenger. Information can be extracted from an incoming email or a robot pulling data from other software solutions. The power of Pega's low-code technology allows you to create an application where you can interact with your users in the channel of their choice. With omnichannel development capabilities, organizations can unify their development activities for all the required channels rather than maintain disparate lines of code.
Users are a great source for data, but the data that is needed is often located in another system. Through a visual interface, Pega Platform empowers users to build integrations to these systems to obtain the data necessary to drive the process forward. Pega Platform assists users by graphically mapping data into their application for a holistic view of the data landscape.
Low code and developers
Pega's visually-driven, end-to-end application development tools make everyone more productive — citizen developers and professional developers alike. While low-code enables the non-developer to create application code, it also allows the experienced developer to write code more rapidly and effectively.
To enable citizen developers with additional functionality to meet your organizational needs, Pega Platform application development studios enable developers to dive deeper to craft a solution to the business problem, hiding the implementation and visualizing the business logic for others to consume. With patterns for reuse and extension built into the Pega platform, developers can build a solution once and leverage it many times throughout the entire ecosystem.
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