The Art and Science of Managing a Mendix Project

Let us start with some data, as shared by Forbes:

● 75% of ERP projects and 60% of Data Analytics projects fail to meet the original objectives according to a study conducted by Gartner

● When it comes to new product innovation using next-generation technologies, the failure rate is even higher at 95%

● According a study conducted by McKinsey, almost 70% of digital transformation efforts don’t meet all the original business objectives

To add to this, according to a Standish Group study reported in Project Smart UK, 31% of IT projects were canceled outright and the performance of 53% was challenged due to various reasons including lack of proper resources, poor definition of project scope, lack of accountability and bad project management.

Of course, this is not to say that these technology projects completely failed. Rather, it points to the fact that they do not perform as expected.

The question is: what is the solution? How can IT leaders and CIOs ensure that a project is truly successful and delivers the necessary business outcome?

In this blog, we restrict our focus to getting this right in the case of Mendix project, wherein an application is being developed or upgraded in the Mendix low-code platform.

Crucial Factors Contributing to Technology Project Success

A quick evaluation of the reasons for the failure of technology projects reveals poor project management to be the key culprit in causing delays, cost overruns, and failures

Broadly, we can say that the following are some of the most important factors to assure the success of your project and enjoy a good ROI:

● Resource planning: Resource management should be a key consideration in any project planning along with structures, themes, and interfaces. This includes human, financial, and even infrastructural resource planning.

● Goals and objectives: Having a clear goal with all the stakeholders aligned to it, is crucial for the success of an IT project. But often, there is a lack of clarity and, more importantly, lack of ongoing monitoring to ensure the project is progressing towards achieving the goals and objectives.

● Project visibility: Collaboration, communication and transparency are essential to keep all team members aligned and aware of progress, be up to date with the status of tasks and manage documents efficiently.

● Shifting goals: We are all familiar with new requests being added here and there. Though it may seem small, it can affect the overall progress of the project due to the impact on the resources and the outcome unless there is a tight reign on the project lifecycle.

● Unrealistic expectations: Be it the end goal, timelines, or capabilities of the team, a project manager needs a clear understanding and be realistic when setting the goals to improve the chances of success of the project.

Improved Project Management in the case of a Low-Code Development Effort using Mendix

Mendix development services facilitates a Scrum-based development approach allowing developers and other stakeholders to facilitate intuitive project management and rapid deployment to different environments by supporting the development process.

At Indium Software, we have seen tremendous success rates using the Mendix Project Management Solution. For instance, we undertook a full-stack development of end-to-end services for an aggregator of real estate agents running a cloud-based digital platform offering brokerage services. It had to be scalable and provide features such as analytics for business workflows and role-based functions as well as value-added features to improve the application experience.

Developing on Mendix and leveraging the best functional delivery practices not only enabled onboarding 20,000 agents on the site but also delivered a strong digital experience.

One of the key highlights was rapid deployment with 100% delivery success.

Indium was able to achieve this by leveraging the Mendix platforms Project Management capabilities in the following 5 key areas:

● In-Built Storyboarding: One of the best features the Mendix platform offers is storyboarding, so essential for agile development. Normally, third-party storyboards

need to be integrated into the development process but with Mendix, it is possible to create and modify storyboards on the fly.

● Requirements Management: The success of a project is further assured by a closed-house, official forum that allows solutions to be accessed and fetched easily. Collaboration is made possible with other developers within the platform.

● Component Reusability: One of the greatest delaying factors in rapid deployments is component development that then needs to be stored in a JAR. But with Mendix, artifacts can be convened and stored in a forum or a community that is public or private and reused. Across applications, these components can be leveraged as a widget or an API. The artifacts also make third-party integrations very easy and fast.

● Sizing the Application: Sizing an application is a crucial and difficult task in any project. Mendix makes it simple by offering a containerized stack which is determined automatically based on the number of licenses requested. This enables automating and simplifying the deployment process, thereby improving the chances of a timely release.

● Low-Code: And, of course, the last but not the least — the fact that Mendix is low-code, and allows even non-technical users to leverage the prebuilt apps to manage assets, events, expenses, etc. — providing a guided, step-by-step app creation experience helps in rapid deployment boosts the team strength. Tutorials are available to help the users learn how to build complex app templates very easily.

In addition to the above, the Mendix platform is designed for easy management of requirements. Specifically, it is really simple to do the following

1. Backlog Management is a breeze

2. The Mendix Feedback Widget makes it easy to gather feedback from end-users

3. It is easy to integrate Mendix with third-party project management tools like Jira

4. The Mendix Developer Portal is a central hub for requirements management, task management and ensuring that all “user stories” get converted into features

5. With Mendix, it is easy to get access to Sprint Status and ongoing Progress

6. Last but not the least, it is easy to track and audit any changes made to the original project scope/requirements

Why Indium Software for Mendix Implementation

At Indium Software, we’ve established a strategic partnership with Mendix, the world leader in low-code development services. Over the last few years, we’ve serviced 30+ customers across the globe with a wide range of Mendix development services. We picked Mendix after careful evaluation of many different LCDPs.

Today, we employ 150+ Mendix developers and currently have 3 developers in the Top 10 of the global Mendix leaderboard. Over the years, Indium Software has built deep expertise in using Mendix to deliver enterprise-grade applications for clients in various sectors including healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, banking, financial services & insurance (BFSI), consumer packaged goods (CPG), and retail.

Recently, we were a Platinum Sponsor at Mendix World 2021, and it was a wonderful experience for us to share the stage with some of the pioneers of the low-code revolution.

If you’re looking to build a new application or modernize a legacy application, in most cases low-code development is a good option to consider. It makes it easy for business teams to collaborate with developers as applications get built. Low-code Development Platforms like Mendix are also designed for speed, user experience, multi-cloud support, security, and scalability.