Pegasystems Inc has announced the beta availability of an innovative collaboration tool. It believes this new tool can help developers accelerate the design and build of new applications when paired with its industry-leading automation platform.
Pega GenAI Blueprint offers an AI-infused workflow design tool. The challenge for many organisations is that designing and developing apps can take weeks. Where Blueprint differs from GenAI solutions within the app development cycle is that it assists during the ideation stage of design thinking rather than just in the creation of code. Ideation is a phase of transformation that is often overlooked.
Pega believes that using GenAI to optimise the definition workflows has a greater chance of helping transformation projects to succeed. Successful transformations, or ones that deliver success to the organisation, are more likely to have a higher number of actions taken. Research by McKinsey indicated that only 31% of transformations succeed on average. 78% are successful and completed 24 actions.
What does GenAi Blueprint do?
The platform enables organisations to create a Blueprint for an app design by describing the goals for the transformation. The platform then uses GenAI to create optimal designs using the repository of workflow best practices that the Pega platform has available. Blueprint can also access and leverage previously defined data models and integrations, further accelerating the process.
Once created, users can modify the templates created, further defining workflows, data and persona experience. The designs show how the app can automate and digitise customer journeys using the visually interactive tool. The process is collaborative. Stakeholders can be added to to view, edit or comment on the workflow, further iterating the design until it is satisfactory. Using the cloud platform, this process is rapid.
Users can then import the Blueprint design into Pega Infinity, where it instantly prototypes the design, developing an application that is ready for testing and subsequent deployment. The process could shave days or weeks off the previous application development lifecycle.
Pega expects the platform to be generally available during Q2. Kerim Akgonul, chief product officer of Pega, commented, “Deploying a workflow app involves much more than just generating code – it starts with an optimized design grounded in best practices and configured for the unique needs of an enterprise. Done poorly, these initial steps could lead to missed deadlines, cost overruns, and mismatched expectations later on.
“By eliminating the common obstacles that have long plagued app design, Pega GenAI Blueprint expedites the journey to an optimal design and ensures everyone is on the same page. Now, the once daunting app design process becomes less intimidating, which can fuel even greater ambition to dream up additional groundbreaking apps that will propel organizations to new heights.”
Some benefits of the Pega GenAI Blueprint
Pega highlighted some of the reasons that explain why they feel this latest solution can make a real difference for organisations.
The ideation creation and workflow definition stage encompasses every aspect of the application design, enabling rapid ideation and eliminating the time-consuming circular process that often occurs. With predefined workflows, it means that the Pega Infinity platform can quickly develop the application again without the back and forth between the developers and the business.
The platform uses the industry-leading Microsoft Azure OpenAI platform. Pega adds to that over 40 years of workflow knowledge from across multiple industries. In the future, Pega is committed to enabling organisations to bring their own best practices into the data repository. It will further accelerate the development of applications and improve compliance and consistency, even when used by distributed teams.
The language used by Blueprint means that IT can interface with the solution. They can talk about data models, connectors, and other technical language. The business users can use their own language to build the applications. The system will also provide information in a language suitable for the audience, providing them as PDF documents if required.
The integration into the low-code Pega platform allows apps to be developed quickly. Importantly, further changes to a Blueprint can flow through to the low-code platform to ensure that iterative changes, either corrections or compliance changes, are quickly implemented.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean
Pega GenAI Blueprint promises much. However, only once the beta customers have started using it in earnest will it be possible to see whether it lives up to the hype. The solution is potentially groundbreaking and provides a rapid acceleration of development.
However, what is missing from the announcement is whether the users of the platform need to develop new skills, such as prompt engineering. GenAI platforms are not omniscient nor generally intelligent yet. They operate within parameters, and it will be important for users to understand what those parameters are.
That the knowledge is built with historical context is positive. However, will this solution be perfect? Will it have a few flaws? If the latter, not all of them are going to be discovered straight away. Organisations should apply considerable testing to the developed applications, even if there are savings on development costs.
