The Business Agility Blog

Partnering up with seasoned specialists is a core element of our company strategy. We strive for partnerships that will bring in industry specific expertise and skills for enterprises in need for innovative solutions! We are glad to help our partners expand their business as well. So here we have five partners explain why working with Mendix brought them more than “just glory“…

Last week one of the Dev Ops guys pointed out something rather special. A topic on our forum received an accepted answer within two and a half minutes. Then right after that a second question was asked in the same topic and received an answer within one minute! As a marketeer I know what makes a community worthwhile and this made me realize how valuable the Mendix community has become. For avid Mendix users this is the place to get the skills, tips, tricks and help to find your way on the forefront of developing apps. Let’s break down the facts:

3000+ shared experiences

Over the past two years, the Mendix community generated a solid body of content with 3326 questions asked and answered. The most popular topic of conversation is what you can accomplish with microflows: visually designing complex business logic. A big body of content means that people who are new to Mendix can dig in and find the solution they’ve been looking for fast. And maybe more important users share experiences with Mendix, possibilities that shorten your project and solutions you might not haven’t thought about yet.

Problems are being solved, fast

As mentioned before, the Mendix community response time is second to none. Often the solution to one’s problem are solved within minutes. Meaning it’s very unlikely you’ll get stuck. It’s impressive to see solutions being shared within minutes time after time, after time.

We don’t diss the Newbie

One of the worst things that can happen in a community is snobbery. It scares away new talent so we discourage it (you will get down votes). In fact we always point them towards the suitable documentation when possible instead of barking at them. Some of the former new kids on the agile development block became top contributors! Want proof? here you go…

No Noise, Just Glory

A lot of communities struggle with noise and low quality of discussion. The Mendix community thrives on a self regulating system encouraging quality content and discouraging noise by an up- and down- voting mechanism. An up vote will get you points, a down vote will cost you points. The more points you gather the more privileges you get. Everybody can be a moderator. Also the introduction of an “accepted answer” makes it immediately clear what the solution was for a question or problem. No Noise Just Glory!

Why not become a better Business Engineer and wrap up your apps faster by joining our community too?!

Last Friday there was a lot of debate in our office. Not about the new construction we are undergoing as our U.S. teams expands, but about the big game to be played on Sunday. Our local sports franchise had made it to another big game and everyone had their plans. Some were hosting parties at their houses. Others were going to local establishments for drinks and good times. Others like me were going to bunker down and remove themselves from outside world contact until there were zeros on the game clock.

One of my colleagues began telling me about the great “squares” he got in his wife’s office pool and demanded an explanation as to why we weren’t doing one. A few guys popped their heads up and said they would be willing to participate if someone was willing to put a grid together to fill out. I decided that I would take this on but needed to figure out the best way of going about it.

It’s easy, just an 11 x 11 grid in an Excel file or drawn with a ruler, pen, and paper right? No way! If I’m going to spend 10-15 minutes setting this all up why not spend another 25 building an app to do this same thing? This was going to be easier than the app that saved Christmas, all I needed was one entity called “Square” with the attributes “Name”, ”Editable”, and “Number”.

As you can see there’s a little lightning bolt, telling you that I added a microflow on the change of a square. Basically what this did is if the Name was empty then it left it as editable = true, otherwise editable = false. This allowed me to prevent my co-workers from editing other people’s picks.

Then I created a template grid that was 11 x 11, and a couple of microflows. First flow created 121 squares, labeled the header squares, and rendered them un-editable.

The next one used our random number generator from the app store to fill in the values for all of the header rows.

So I launched the app to the cloud and sent out the URL to the office. Everyone selected their squares throughout the day and at days end we got our numbers.

At the end of the day it was really cool to see how quickly this app could be built. Sure I could have put this all on a piece of paper and walked around to everyone. Or I could have put it to a spreadsheet and only let one person edit it at a time. I believe people found it fun to watch the spots being taken while they themselves decided which random square their initials should be placed in.

Obviously there was a great deal more that I could have added to make this a production type application. You know like if we were doing it for money I could have tracked who did and didn’t pay. But gambling is illegal so this was merely for “entertainment purposes only”. It would have been nice to figure out a way to help the local team to victory but unfortunately that wasn’t in the cards.

So when the next Superbowl, U.S. open, Olympics, Rumble in the Jungle, Thrilla from Manilla, Soccer Worldcup, Wimbledon or NBA playoffs are on you know where to go to build your own pool: Mendix! You can try to build a simple app yourself for free here.

Edit: our CEO (who is Dutch) won the pool, probably a good career move to solve business problems and not work in the NFL.

The role of the Chief Information Officer has changed dramatically over the last decade. As new technologies permeate large organizations, CIOs amass powerful capabilities to change the value propositions of their companies. Research firms like Forrester convey the prevalence of CIOs involved in strategic innovation and product decisions that would have once been left to marketing and sales executives. Tomorrow’s CIO is a Chief Innovation Officer.

Speed of change is an incredibly important indicator of an IT team’s effectiveness. A CIO that spends 80% of their resources maintaining existing systems limits their impact on strategic innovation. Those that enable rapid business change become heroes. The very basis for this blog is business agility, a characteristic owned in large by those that manage technology to enable and serve the business.

CIOs use Mendix as a secret weapon for enabling innovation because Mendix doesn’t require them to activate teams of developers to get significant initiatives underway. A large part of enabling rapid business innovation means getting your IT ecosystem in check so that you have enough time to focus on new initiatives. In this use case, Mendix sits on top of existing systems as an agile change layer – giving teams of one or two ‘special ops’ developers the power to innovate without dealing with rigid underlying systems or overweight requirements documentation.

IT teams at most organizations are expected to take a disproportionate amount of time to complete projects. Their business unit customers have no idea what’s involved, and even then, project teams may have unknowns that could easily turn into productivity black holes. We’ve all been conditioned to think that initiatives involving technology have an innate uncertainty in scope. This keeps business units from voicing suggestions and IT units from changing the status quo.

Clearly there are several factors in play when it comes to ensuring CIO’s have the power to innovate. There’s the speed and cost of change at the center of any initiative, these numbers have to create a business case with a real return. Then there are technological capabilities; does the CIO’s team spend too much time maintaining and not enough time producing? Can they separate the two activities and align them with business needs both now and in the future? And of course, the organization – is there opportunity for a CIO to innovate, and more importantly, can the CIO find these gaps?

CIOs frequently see business opportunities go by the wayside due to an inability to deliver applications quickly. In order to be a Chief Innovation Officer, today’s CIO should focus on enabling rapid business change to become a strategic player for their organization.

Download our CIO Playbook for more Mendix best practices for CIOs.

Alexander Willemsen of Capegroup! Alexander is one of those users every company wishes for. He has been a very passionate member of the Mendix Community from the beginning and helped with solving more than 108 questions regarding Mendix. Needles to say these are the people who know Mendix in & out. His feedback helped improving the platform in a significant way and therefore we are happy to hand over him the award accompanied with a good bottle of champagne!

The reinsurance business involves extremely complex, logic-driven processes that are facilitated mainly by software applications. These applications provide an opportunity for reinsurance companies to differentiate themselves. Nothing is more frustrating than missing great business opportunities because IT departments can’t respond fast enough, or existing systems are too difficult to modify.

Adding an agile layer on top of these rigid systems offers COOs and CIOs at reinsurance companies the opportunity to react quickly without employing large teams of developers. We call this layer a “change layer” because it enables rapid changes that offer immediate business value on top of an otherwise inflexible core system.

Inefficient manual process? Automate it. Disparate systems slowing you down? Connect them. Underwriters doing arduous tasks? It’s called a microflow; and it’s a logic-based process flow. Have a novel idea that will win more business, but no IT horsepower to implement it? That’s what your change layer is for. It allows you to build even the most complex applications 10x faster, with minimal input from IT.

Most of these applications are custom portals, and while you might think those two words equate to a whole lot of time and money, your change layer gives you the ability to ensure a rapid and significant ROI. The key here is that you don’t need to employ an army of developers to implement a new portal.

Most of the work can be done by business people, and in our opinion, it should be. They are the ones who know the problem and are likely to have an idea for a solution. We worked with Arch Re to help them get into the Program business by building a custom application that provides a more efficient mechanism for clients to report the risks subject to the contract. Click here to read the case study.

We’ve been advocating the Mendix feedback mechanism heavily ever since the release of Mendix 3.0 in 2011. We knew it was the missing link between people using apps and people making apps. You probably know what it is and how easily it aligns your apps with the ever changing needs of business people, but so far the Mendix feedback loop has only been available to those of us with both a Sprintr account and an app running in the Mendix Cloud. With the latest update of Sprintr, you can implement the Feedback Widget into your company´s website as well to find out directly from visitors what they think of your site.

Here’s what to do to fix the glitches in your site within five minutes:

1. Get a sprintr account if you haven’t already
2. Paste a little code snippet in your head tag (like you -or your webmaster- did for Google Analytics)
3. Put the ID of a specific ‘website’ sprintr project into the code
4. Tweak the code: You can tweak the code to enable attachments, detect usernames and many more options to collect the tightest metadata possible

I’ll bet the minute you start using the widget you will get suggestions for improvements you could never think about for yourself. We use it for Mendix.com as well and within days we had great input…

• “Where can I find the Mendix Whitepaper” (so we made it very apparent on the product page now)
• “Your email states the event is on date X, while the site states the event is on date Y.”
• “Just finished watching the video on SAP integration, do you have one like that for Microsoft Dynamics?”

The feedback widget makes Sprintr different than any other project management tool out there. For the first time, you and your end users can collaborate in real time through your website or application.

Any business analyst who’s dealt with requirements changing late in the game will appreciate the transparency that we have built into our free agile collaboration tool, Sprintr. There are no “silver bullets” out there for common BA issues, but Sprintr addresses problems like business-IT miscommunication, inefficiency, lack of visibility or involvement. Anticipating these issues in order to complete projects on time is one way to make you stand out and reach rock star status. For those who have already turned the tide on changing the way they complete projects, here are a few reasons why Sprintr and the role of the business analyst can get along so well:

1. Everyone Knows Everything

This might scare some of you, but having watched a few projects go awry when certain stakeholders are privy to specific requirements, I can’t emphasize the value of transparency enough. When user stories are submitted, every project member has the opportunity to comment on or modify them, and everyone is aware of changing requirements.

2. Sequence By Priority

There’s no need to lecture you about the cold hard value of scrum – the development methodology that Sprintr supports – but by laying out your user stories (requirements) in priority order and time boxing them into deliverable releases, you can rest assure that the requirements with the highest ROI will be delivered first. In Sprintr, you can even drag and drop user stories into priority order to keep your backlog in check.

3. Immediate Feedback Loops

Sprintr has a great feedback mechanism. You just put a simple widget in your application or website, and end users or testers can submit ideas, issues, or questions from within the application. All you need to do is go through these tickets and turn the appropriate ones into new user stories. Suddenly you have a feedback cycle that enhances requirement management wrapped up in a spiffy little web app.

4. Cloud Connected Scrum

Distributed project teams deal with a host of issues that keep business analysts from achieving their goals. You have multiple time zones, people with different technical backgrounds and work ethics, all of which amplify the miscommunication and inefficiency that typically accompany a complex software project. Sprintr alleviates these issues by centralizing all communication and project management processes in a cloud application.

5. Social Activity Streams

Sprintr is like Facebook, except more productive. The sales guy who coined this declaration was referring to the social facets of Sprintr – the Company Wall, the Project Wall, the daily updates, and the comment threads. These components make Sprintr a collaboration space without any physical limitations – no product owner calls, no whiteboards, and no scheduled meeting times.

As you can see, business analysts truly have the most to gain from Sprintr. Sure, developers can plan out sprints and milestones, and business users can submit user stories and feedback – but you’re the one who gets to sit back and watch the magic happen. You are no longer “over-documenting” requirements ahead of time, hoping that IT has received the input clearly and will provide the output as requested. You have a tool to manage this heavily-trafficked intersection, and virtually guarantee that projects are completed on time and within budget.

For those of you interested in learning more, watch this webinar to learn how Mendix and Sprintr eliminate the risk of project failure.

Last week, research done by Multiscope (read the article [in Dutch] here and here), revealed that the number one agony for employees is poorly functioning software. Agony caused by either poor performance, poor user interface or limited functionality (likely caused by faulty business-IT collaboration). Now, I could start blogging a mantra about why agile development is the way to fix this massive glitch (for more on this visit the Mendix Essentials or take a look at one of our success stories), but let’s start with a very simple solution that will take less organizational measures than a full agile adoption (if you haven’t done that already!)

First let’s see the top 5 of agonies for employees:

• Poor software (either poor performing, GUI or functionality)
• Elbowing colleagues to get on top
• Bad ambiance at the office
• Colleagues who always come in late
• Loud people in the office.

It’s bizarre to see that the number one agony is the one that can be resolved in the most tangible way: just by listening. Instead of having to take management measures or expensive H&R campaigns to change people’s behavior. All that is needed is a simple solution to give the end user a voice; to engage them in actively improving the tools they need to succeed in their day to day work. This simple solution for your organization materializes in a button that comes with Sprintr: The Feedback Button.

I’ll bet the minute you start collecting feedback and the first bugs or design issues have been resolved, your end users feel they have a voice and are in control. Perhaps the ROI of all the fixes is so big your company can actually start those expensive H&R campaign to nail the other agonies as well.