Business and IT development are two sides of the same coin. Building a new business initiative, or developing new features in an application, are complicated processes that take too long and are full of risks. Failure isn’t an option when the stakes are so high, so your instinct is to think everything through to perfection. And this is what can hold organization’s back from successful digital transformation.
The IT-driven era in which we live demands speed, flexibility, and involvement. And today’s technology (think low- and no-code tools) are already fully ready to meet those demands. Thinking too long about digital transformation means that you miss the boat. In the time that you spend thinking, your competition has already taken giant digital leaps forward.
Nowadays, your motto should go from “don’t fail” to “fail fast”. This might sound negative. But by actually implementing solutions and ‘failing’ you can see in real time what works, what doesn’t, and what needs to be adjusted. In a disruptive and digital world you can’t learn only by thinking: you have to also learn by doing.
The failing fast principle thrives on speed, agility, and fast adjustments: much like business development or IT projects. And it’s the opposite of old wisdom that thinking long and developing the perfect product the first time around.
In application development, “failing” early gives you valuable data to get to your optimal product faster by focusing on the user experience. You develop a product that is “market fit”: a product that is designed to align perfectly with the user experience. Monitoring, testing, and adjusting become fundamental tasks of every organization, ones that the business side can learn from, too, to eliminate bugs and errors in all kinds of processes.
The speed and flexibility of low- and no-code platforms brings application development up to speed (literally) to the fail fast party. Just ask a programmer how time consuming rounds of testing and adjustments are in the traditional development process (spoiler alert: it’s very time consuming).
When you eliminate coding from the process though, you increase the flexibility of development by 20 times (at least). You can incorporate feedback in real time and make adjustments on the fly without having to alter an application’s codebase, making adjustments a breeze. This also brings together both business and IT innovations by creating a bridge for the two sides to meet under a common language: innovation.
In a digital world, constant innovation isn’t a choice anymore: it’s an obligation. This demands flexibility and speed from every organization, from the business end to IT departments. Luckily, the technology is far enough already that innovation is available for both sides in every organization.
Nick Levy is a digital business consultant with EY’s Financial Services Advisory Strategy & Innovation group. He’s passionate about the potential of low- and no-code development to shake up established technology operating models and drive exciting new ways of working and innovation.
Equally adept at deriving strategy or planning an implementation program, Nick helps clients in their digital transformation using a combination of established and emerging technologies and methods of working.
Nick is an evangelist for low- and no-code and obsesses about unlocking the pace of change in businesses to deliver breakthrough customer focused innovation. That’s why he’ll be giving the keynote presentation at Betty Blocks on Stage 2019, the world’s first no-code festival. Want to learn more about how EY transformed their strategy from thinking to doing? Join us on March 14th!