Enterprise Times met with Ryan Ellis, SVP of Product Management and Development Experience at Salesforce. Ryan suggests the low code drive has really been taking off. Furthermore, Salesforce has been active in the movement for quite some time. Ryan discusses his top 4 tips for any organisation planning to develop cloud-based apps and websites.
Ryan Ellis 4 tips for developing software
- The first place to start is around modularity. Increasingly, there is a major trend around the composability of applications. When enterprises build things in a modular way, they can develop smaller pieces of code which is easier for developers to maintain. Programmers can develop APIs determining how various components work. Then combine them together to create a variety of really broad customer experiences. So modularity is a really key element to building modern applications.
Ryan Ellis, SVP of Product Management and Development Experience at Salesforce - Embrace the concept of low code. Some organisations are a little bit afraid of it. They may be concerned about potential issues related to governance or security. Organisations needs to embrace the concept of low code to enable teams to start to work in those environments. This may require providing adequate training for developers. Creating rigorous DevOps pipelines, so that developers or users have a framework in which they are building these customer experiences. In addition to activities such as automated tests, security evaluations etc.
- There are lot of components and services that are already out there and available. Businesses do not need to reinvent the wheel. For example, in the Salesforce App Exchange, there are an incredibly broad and diverse set of components. Some of them are full scale applications, others are much smaller pieces of development. More than 700 predefined flows for every industry including individual components, UI components that can be drag and dropped onto a page. Advanced charting tools that do not require any development. Businesses can download these from the App Exchange in just a few clicks and then configure and use them. No need to develop code from scratch.
- Be iterative in your nature. There is no need to create something over a period years. Instead develop and publish it live. Build something, get it out there and get feedback. Put those changes out there, on a regular process get feedback and engage with your users. There are tools designed to receive feedback within the Salesforce platform. There are also detailed concepts which provide in-app guidance. Businesses can use the feedback to train users through the application itself. They can also receive feedback from them while they’re using it. Simultaneously, monitoring tools are available to identify how the application is performing. Is the performance good in various regions, or on various devices.
Ryan confirmed these best practices Salesforce follow to build software. They also share these best practices with customers and partners building their own developments on top of Salesforce’s platforms.
