GenAI is upon us, and the enterprise software landscape is ripe for a revolution. We've all witnessed – and perhaps even participated in – the clunky, code-heavy approach that leads to mountains of technical debt and backlogs that stretch for years. It's a system stuck in the "video store" era, a time when you browsed endless rows of possibilities, hoping to stumble upon something good… We’re long overdue for our Netflix moment.
The way we build enterprise software has become too complicated. We’ve created an army of specialists; the current approach burdens enterprises with too many roles spanning business analysts, architects (both business and system), developers, testers, and various specialists in user interfaces, integration, performance, security, accessibility, and operations.
It’s no surprise that it takes too long and costs too much to deliver enterprise software. In my experience, the first three phases of the software development lifecycle account for approximately 75% of the time and effort: requirements gathering (30%) to capture application purpose and functionalities across stakeholders; workflow creation (20%), which outlines the user journey across the steps and stages; and then UI design and creation (25%) to craft the user interface, so its intuitive and aesthetically pleasing.
It’s a heavy process that’s often more pilgrimage than odyssey. And as we’ve learned from history, it’s not the strong who survive – it’s those who adapt. The winners will always be those who challenge the status quo and embrace a new paradigm.
It’s like our Netflix moment needs to be more of a "streaming service" for software development - a system that understands your needs, leverages collective experience, and delivers solutions that are efficient, effective, and built to last. And it knows what you like, and what similar people like, sometimes more than you want it to!
I liked Blockbuster when it was all that I knew, however once I saw Netflix, I was never going back.
Maybe we need to start a "less code" revolution.
Why more code is the losing path
The current "throw more code at it" approach simply hasn’t worked. Many vendors are saying that they can use GenAI to generate code, but what IT or business leader really thinks their challenge is that they don’t have enough code? Who wants to continue hard coding logic into silos and channels? Life is too short…
The case for change and why we’re better than how we operate today:
- Tech Debt: Every line of code adds to the ever-growing burden of maintaining legacy systems. It's a vicious cycle that stifles innovation and slows everything down.
- GenAI snake-oil salespeople: Don't be fooled by companies pushing "GenAI" solutions that patch over existing problems, or help you easily generate more code. More code only compounds the growth of the mountain of technical debt we are already under, and the greater the debt, the greater the operational risk and complexity we need to grind through.
Marketing budgets and flashy demos can't hide the truth: true innovation comes from challenging the status quo, not simply adding more code or layers of complexity. Enterprises need a platform that leverages the power of GenAI responsibly, within a secure and structured framework.
Pega Blueprint: Your Roadmap to Success
Last November, inspiration struck when our Product team showed us how an RFP could be used to reverse engineer the steps and stages of an application by only using the client’s desired data fields. It was a watershed moment. We realized that clients no longer need to spend weeks if not months documenting how everything works as long as they know the terminal data that’s captured at the end of their business process. Show me an insurance company that doesn’t know the data they need to issue the policy, or a bank that doesn’t know what data they need to approve a loan. Our clients always know what data they need at the end of a business process. Always.
We were able to revolutionize the first three phases of software development by adding the power of GenAI to our best practices. By weaving them together, we massively reduced where the most time, people and effort is currently consumed: requirements gathering, workflow creation, and UI design and creation.
Pega Blueprint is more than just a product; it's a philosophy. We leverage our vast knowledge of engineering, implementation, industry best practices, and augment that with the voice of the internet, all to empower you to get to business impact faster.
Here's how Blueprint breaks the mould:
- Taming the Beast: We streamline the software development process, eliminating the need for a dozen different roles and functions. Blueprint empowers a more focused and collaborative approach. It flips requirements gathering into requirements validation.
- Bring Innovation and Best-Practice: Challenge conventional thinking with the poser of Pega’s historical best practices and the amazing content of the internet.
- The Power of Responsible AI: The Pega platform has been infused with GenAI, so it’s operating within a secure, safe, auditable, and structured system. The "enterprise layer" ensures everything is traceable, manageable, and built for change, and “center out” ensures there's no need to have code in the channels, and when you build it once, you can deploy across all channels in a fully connected end-user experience.
- Focus on What Matters: Blueprint streamlines the time-consuming phases of software development and frees you to focus on innovation, value creation and business differentiation.
The world of enterprise software is on the cusp of a paradigm shift. Pega Blueprint is the compass that will guide us through this exciting new frontier.
Are you ready to join the revolution and leave the code-laden past behind?