Digital Means Software Is An Expression Of Business

Digital refers to “business models with technology at the core.” This means that software is an expression of the business. Thus, a truly digital business quickly implements and continuously improves all its policies, processes, and procedures in software. There are many new practices and technologies that can help organizations innovate and deal with the constant change and other challenges of becoming digital.

But There Are Challenges

Agile transformation, low-code, the future of work, and citizen development are among the most important priorities for technology leaders today — and these topics are all key to becoming digital. However, most businesses don’t recognize the connection between them, and this brings clear challenges:

  • The developer shortage prohibits most firms from making and changing the massive amounts of software needed for digital business.
  • The difficulties in agile adoption prohibit most firms from scaling agile culture to the degree needed for digital business. Only 26% of organizations pursuing agile transformations are successfully proficient.
  • Highly scaled low-code development (especially by citizen developers in business roles rather than software pros) requires discipline — we can’t just deploy hundreds or thousands of apps daily without standards and shared practices to assure security and overall quality.

Becoming truly digital requires complementary approaches to people, process, and technology, but these concerns are often wrongly dealt with in a separated fashion.

Crossing The Digital Chasm

Digital chasm

How do future fit organizations address these issues and cross the digital chasm? Through a holistic approach combining agile principles and practices with low-code development platforms. Agile provides the necessary discipline for low-code development, while low-code provides the inherently suitable technology for inspiring innovation, autonomy, and agile adoption at scale. Thus, together, low-code and agile are the rocket fuel of business-led digital transformation. 

John and I are researching this subject together. We will share our early findings at Forrester’s Technology & Innovation forums this fall. John will co-present with Jessica D’Oliveira in Austin, TX on September 29–30 and Diego will present in London on October 13–14. Diego will also be joined by Paul Kobylanski, head of citizen development (DIY) from Royal Dutch Shell to share, discuss, and showcase how agile and low-code can rocket fuel digital transformations and how a large global enterprise is doing it.