The Business Agility Blog

The Sailboat

See more Microflow Art from Last Year

This week, we began a little competition on our forum that has fostered plenty of interest in the past. About a years ago, the simple question, “What is the most beautiful microflow you have ever drawn?” sparked interest among users of the Mendix platform, as each microflow often expresses a representation of something visually interesting – whether it be a plane, sailboat, or flower.

The competition will run for the coming months, where business engineers will submit and vote for microflows. In case you’re wondering, these microflows are used to add complex business logic to enterprise applications – in other words, both beauty and function are at the center of this competition.

Both valid and invalid microflows will be accepted, with a prize awarded for each category. The Mendix platform has a unique visual modeling studio, and we are delighted to see a new level of creativity in the drawing of functional microflows.

Perhaps the most important facet of agile software development is its innate ability to satisfy user requirements better, more accurately, more consistently, than what is considered ‘traditional’ software development. Where ‘traditional’ software development begs the user for all necessary information upfront and then reluctantly for feedback at the end of a project, agile development never lets the user out of sight.

This one differentiation separates traditional and nontraditional, slow and fast, waterfall and agile, 50% requirements satisfied and 100% requirements satisfied. The iterative nature of agile development forces engineers to go back to the user regularly, but more importantly, forces them to think of the user continuously. This interaction, and its psychological properties, is at the discretion of the platform employed.

While there are thousands of sales people that will graciously explain why one platform is more worthy than another, I will for once stay software agnostic and comment solely on the significance of the decision. As with any methodology, one platform may lend itself more appropriately to agile development (and the notion of continuous user involvement).

The stand ups, stories, and acceptance tests keep engineers in cadence with each other and the end user they aim to satisfy. Those very same end users that willingly provide their continuous feedback and involvement are under the direction of the decision maker responsible for your project. Your feedback loop with your end user is therefore their feedback loop with their supervisor.

So as the gears of your agile team continue to turn, they propel the internal gears of your client’s team, creating a centralized dependency on the accuracy, clarity, and knowledge of your end user. This person has a very good reason to be involved in your project, as you have a very good reason to keep them involved. The end result: software that satisfies the requirements of its users.

In office dialect: technology that satisfies the needs of the business.

By no means am I original in saying that the software development world has accepted agile development as a recognized response to decades of wasted time, sunken investments and fruitless skills. History (as unpredictable as it can be) tells us that steady adoption of new, speedier methodologies in young, innovative companies precedes its penetration into organizations of more portly proportions. In effect, the companies who adopt agile last are those who need it most.

I believe that to truly understand the agile development process, one needs to see an agile team in action; and perhaps even attend a daily “stand up” meeting.

I believe that same level of understanding applies to any good agile development platform, and Mendix is no exception.  Gaining the best appreciation for the Mendix platform typically occurs once agile developers see it in action. I can say (or write) “one click deployment,” “visual modeling,” and “integrated AppStore” until I’m blue in the face (or red in the fingers) – however, it’s a developers  ability to create a CRM system with Google Maps integration in less than 10 minutes that really does the talking (or typing). Once developers actually touch the product and begin to create with it, it is then that they truly understand – much like attending that first daily “stand up”.

Building and managing applications on the Mendix platform is a very visual process, from the initial modeling of the application within their own domain model, to deploying it for immediate feedback… However, reading and hearing about it can only prove so valuable – it’s something you’ve really got to see.

To that end, we’re happy to show the Platform in one of our monthly Mendix Training sessions – whether in person or via the web.  In fact, we even use our own engineers (not salespeople) to show you just how easy it is to build and manage applications on the platform. And if that doesn’t work, well then, there’s always the trial to get you started.