App development is a growingchallenge for enterprise IT departments, and business process management software systems are evolving to alleviate this burden. This is especially true as organizations try to get to grips with the Internet of Things, a technology movement that creates huge technical demands that IT teams need to deal with. BPM solutions feature low-code development tools that let businesses build simple apps or customize existing solutions to fine tune their functionality to better align with business processes.
The ability to have business users support app development is necessary in light of the IoT, as a recent TechRepublic report explained that the lack of clear standards makes developing apps to support IoT functions incredibly difficult.
Making apps work for the IoT - It isn't as easy as it seems
Pointing to ideas established by industry expert Alan Cohen, the news source explained that the IoT changes the traditional 80/20 rule into a 95/5 rule. Basically, traditional app development practices operate in such a way that the first 80 percent of the dev cycle takes approximately 20 percent of the time devoted to the project.
The IoT creates numerous development challenges for IT teams, but business users can help.The theory here is that getting the new app off the ground and establishing its core functionality is the easy part, according to the report. The last 20 percent - adding nuanced functions and getting the code up to the quality needed to make the app work within your production environment - on the other hand, takes the most time. When developing for the IoT, projects become so complex in terms of developing advanced capabilities and getting apps to work wellin production that the last five percent of the project takes up 95 percent of the time spent in development.
IoT development is so complexin large partbecause there is a lack of interoperability standards between components. This makes it extremely difficult to get an app to function as it should on a consistent basis.
BPM can ease the IoT development burden
Your business users are not going to be capable of handling the most complex parts of app development. However, application development platforms housed with BPM systems can let theseusers handle the user interface and ensure that the app can move data in line with business process requirements. From there, the IT team will have more time to focus on tailoring the system to the various devices and workflows within your IoT environment, accelerating app deployment and easing the burden placed on IT users.
