Podcast Make Shift

Maud and Lennart discuss how collaborating with a wide array of stakeholders is key to their development process, focusing on people and process first as they digitize airport operations, how low-code has enabled their team to quickly respond to changes due to COVID, and finally, the importance of unlocking and applying data as they create the future of Schiphol’s operations.​

Christina and Laura talk about creating an application and associated database that brings visibility into their clients' internal processes, evolving their consulting service into a scalable product, how they ensure success with a simple, but impactful, on-boarding process, their strategy for data management and permissions for users ranging from chefs to c-suite executives, and identifying sustainable techniques that also reduce their clients' operational costs.

Steve and Imran talk about the lessons that eXp Realty has learned from being a remote-first company who manages an engineering team of 100+, how migrating their monolith mission-critical application to a microservices-based architecture increased departmental collaboration, how they measure success and productivity across their dispersed engineering team, and transition advice for companies impacted by COVID who have not yet adopted comprehensive WFH policies.

Martin talks about the decade-long transformation of the insurance industry from tech laggards to technology champions, how modernizing core systems enable insurers to better engage with customers, the evolution of low-code implementation, from point solutions with simple processes to enterprise-grade deployments, the importance of culture, proper tooling, and organizational structure to deliver software and enable innovation, and finally, how the next decade will require insurers to focus on great digital experiences to maintain a competitive advantage.​

Rich talks about how the tech landscape within hospitals requires a different approach to selling a disrupting technology, the competitive advantage Kermit has created by delivering cloud-based software that still protects sensitive patient data that’s governed by HIPAA, (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), how Kermit transformed from a consulting service into a software-enabled offering by harnessing low-code, how Kermit has successfully digitized and mirrored previously broken workflows in hospitals rather than introducing completely new processes, and finally, insight into how low-code is guiding the future of their product offering.

Do you need to graduate from Excel and build a more robust application to handle internal processes? Secrid previously managed vendor relationships with dozens of spreadsheets, but recognized the risks associated with disparate data sources. Find out how Secrid created a solution quickly to address these issues, increasing the speed they can respond to vendors while maintaining an ability to scale as their business goes global.

Are you being asked to deliver more sophisticated applications despite facing resource constraints? Demands on IT are increasing by the day with no sight of budget increases for headcount, and IT is being stretched to the limit just trying to keep systems and processes running. With a never-ending backlog of projects coming, organizations need to enable their existing workforce to deliver more with less in order to keep up with these increasing demands. Hear from Jordan of NC State and his success story of a non-developer pivoting his trajectory from business major to pro-developer to deliver incredible projects, including an expansive course registration system, that save his university millions of dollars and years of standard development time.

Do you have a sprawling legacy system that is difficult for business units to navigate? Learn how Trane Technologies has taken a staged approach to providing secured access to the information, stored in their legacy database and ERP systems, important to each business unit. This layered approach allows them to provide value to the business in the interim while they work towards providing access to all the stored information in structured categories of microservices/APIs.

In this episode of Make/Shift, hear from Miroslav Samoylenko PhD, Managing Technical Architect (Development Architecture) at Trane Technologies, as he discusses how they selected their initial low code use cases, a mix of internal and customer-facing apps, that had the most return on a minimum investment and then structured a low code program company-wide.

Equipping all developers—professional and citizen alike—to develop their own solutions within their own business units meant that a core team of experts could tackle more complex pain points. By setting up a Center of Excellence with a very small team of experts and a governance and security model to support groundswell of apps distributed across their organization, Trane was able to deliver quickly and efficiently on business needs.

Are you struggling to resource projects that require specific technical knowledge? Continental understood they would not be able to resource their legacy migration work with custom development and needed to find a way for their IT team to move faster and release apps quickly for their enterprise. With an aggressive timeline to move apps built on Lotus Notes and Domino as those platforms approach end-of-life, Continental needed one platform that allowed them to address a wide variety of use cases.

In this episode of Make/Shift, hear from Sven Fleischer, Global IT Lead, as he discusses legacy modernization and how that effort lead to a groundswell of citizen development that has extended well beyond the initial use cases. Learn how IT program and application owners, developers and employees across the company are using low code to deliver business solutions.

Apps built on Mendix include an internal capital request workflow for approval processes, a mobile compliance app, and tracking for delivery, supplier and customer information. In addition to their expanding portfolio of use cases, Continental has also been able to tackle unique challenges during COVID-19, with an app enabling them to communicate with a newly-remote workforce, built in just 5 days.

Changing up your development practice doesn't happen overnight. From the team leader who makes a dramatic shift to get more done with less, to the makers across industries and business functions who turn their ideas into reality, the skill of choosing where, when, and how to make an impact at your company takes hard work.

Sometimes the best strategy is to learn from what others have done before and to create your path to success. Struggling to start that EOL project? Need inspiration for improving a process in your organization? Then check out our new podcast series “Make/Shift,” where we explore how thinkers become makers, and illuminate the journey that individuals take to build solutions that make an impact on their organization.