Pega eliminates IT / Business translation gap with launch of Pega Agile Workbench

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – May 31, 2017 – Pegasystems Inc. (NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company empowering customer engagement at the world’s leading enterprises, today announced the launch of Pega® Agile Workbench – a new visual application development tool that provides a foolproof way for business and IT to collaborate and bring better software to market faster. Using an intuitive sticky note-like interface, Pega Agile Workbench creates a real-time feedback loop that simplifies communication, speeds iteration, and guides all stakeholders onto an aligned path to digital transformation.

While organizations increasingly embrace the benefits of agile development, the struggle to align business and IT goals remains. Businesspeople are most comfortable talking in business terms, while IT staff can get caught up in the intricacies of technology. This often results in numerous miscommunications and misinterpretations with each iteration – causing errors, lost time, cost overruns, and failed projects. Part of Pega® Platform, Pega Agile Workbench picks up where standard agile approaches fall short by providing an intuitive, no-code feedback environment using a common language that anyone in the organization can understand.

Pega Agile Workbench enables business users to give feedback or report a bug simply by pinning a digital note – as text, voice, video, or screenshot – directly in the application they are building. Directions can be as simple as “Move this search box to the top of the screen,” or “Present next best offer at this stage of the process.” Pega automatically translates the feedback notes into a project task or agile artifact within a preferred agile project management tool (including Pega Agile Studio, CA Agile Central, or Atlassian’s JIRA). This creates continuous and seamless hand-offs between business users and IT as they quickly iterate throughout the development process.

This unique real-time agile approach puts business users and IT on the same page – literally and figuratively – resulting in:

• More effective collaboration: Organizations break down communications barriers with a visual, code-free interface using a common language that leaves little room for misinterpretation about what businesspeople want.
• Faster go-to-market: Streamlined workflows take agile development out of tedious email chains and deskside conversations and into a centralized feedback loop. This reduces the number of iterations needed, speeds development processes, and gets products to market faster at lower development costs.
• Better software: By adding new value to existing agile development investments, the real-time agile approach helps developers turbocharge their agile processes to create better applications with fewer errors to meet rising customer expectations.

Pega Agile Workbench is unified in Pega Platform, Pega’s market-leading model-driven application development environment that is proven to develop software 6.4 times faster than traditional methods. It also extends Pega’s unique and proven Directly Capture Objectives (DCO) capabilities to further simplify requirements gathering and cross-team collaboration.

Pega Agile Workbench, which comes fully unified with Pega® Agile Studio, is available for free in June with the newest release of Pega Platform. Users of JIRA and CA Agile Central project management software can integrate these leading third-party tools with Pega Agile Workbench via a downloadable component from the Pega Exchange marketplace. For more information, visit www.pega.com/products/pega-platform/agile-workbench

Quotes & Commentary:

“The agile approach has moved software development lightyears ahead, but it still doesn’t solve the age old conflict between IT and business that slows organizations down,” said Ying Chen, head of product marketing, Platform, Pegasystems. “A real-time agile approach takes coding completely out of the equation so business users and IT can speak the same language. This allows them to keep pace with changing market dynamics and provide products that customers love.”

Supporting Resources:

New product background: Pega Agile Workbench web page

Product Background: Pega Platform

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