Five focus points for successfully scaling up with low-code in your organisation

Was the first low-code project in your organisation an immense success? Is the number of ideas for new applications growing constantly? Then developing with low-code must be structurally embedded in your organisation. What is important and how do you ensure that this process runs smoothly?

Successfully running your first low-code project is often a matter of just getting started. You can still manage with a small team; the project does not yet impact the entire organisation and if you select the right low-code project for your first venture, achieving success will be relatively easy. The second phase called ‘structure’, in which low-code development becomes the standard often requires much more effort from organisations.

These are the five most important issues you should pay attention to:

1. Develop a digital strategy

Now low-code development becomes a structural part of the business strategy, it is important to develop a digital strategy as well. Make sure you don’t lose sight of the bigger picture here. Think about the vision of the company and how developing with low-code can contribute to accomplishing this vision. Record this in a digital strategy and communicate about it. This way, the entire organisation knows the purpose of using low-code.

2. Use existing knowledge and experience

In this second phase, having one development team is often no longer enough and multiple teams have to be formed. Select a few team members from the successful first development team and add them to the new team. As a result, the knowledge and experience from the first project are immediately available in the second team and they do not have to ‘reinvent the wheel’.

Involve other important stakeholders in the development process in this phase as well. Ensure, for example, that the security officer and the enterprise architect can also provide input and record their contribution in guidelines. This way, knowledge from other disciplines can also be used and contributes to an improvement in the quality of applications.

3. Give portfolio management the attention it deserves

Your first low-code project was a success, now different departments will want to have an application as soon as possible. When demand from the business side increases sharply, good portfolio management becomes crucial. It is important to look carefully which applications deliver the most business value. This should already be described in the digital strategy, but it is also important to empower experienced people who have the courage to make clear choices. Otherwise, you run the risk that the wrong priorities will be set and low-code applications will still not deliver their intended value.

4. Go for quality

When scaling up low-code, it is important to set up a controlled system for developing high-quality applications, as the quality of the apps you deliver is essential. After all, this is what converts business demand into real business value. So take the time to ensure the quality of the apps you are going to build.

Draw up low-code guidelines that specify the technical agreements about building applications. Also, think about user interface designs in which you describe what the user interface should look like. This way you develop high-quality apps that offer a consistent user experience.

5. Don’t lose your agile mindset when adding structure

By adding structure you run the risk of losing the agile mindset often introduced in the first low-code project. Therefore, make rules of engagement for low-code development, but without the team losing its freedom in coming up with a solution to the problem.

If this fails, creativity often gets lost and release cycles quickly become too long. This is caused by the fact that applications must then comply with strict rules. An agile coach who works across teams and helps the entire organisation to get a more agile mindset can help out here. This keeps release cycles short and creates an open atmosphere in which there is room for feedback and making mistakes.

Acceleration of the digital transformation

The ‘structure’ phase is by far the most difficult phase of the digital transformation. This is because the use of low-code must be embedded in the organisation in this phase. It is often hard work and requires a group of people who truly believe that low-code is the future for the organisation.

But if it succeeds, this phase of the digital transformation often means an organisation-wide change. The organisation is able to focus on what really matters, achieve its goals and gain competitive advantage.

From ‘structure’ to ‘scale’

The last phase of the digital transformation of organisations is the ‘scale’ phase. How do you recognise when the organisation is ready for this? This is quite difficult to determine. If you have more than three development teams or if you have built more than six applications, efficiently managing multiple applications and teams becomes increasingly important. By making the switch to the ‘scale’ phase you can optimise this process and manage your app portfolio even better.

Would you like to know more about scaling up with low-code in the organization? Download the ‘scaling up with low-code’ checklist down below.