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Pega Express Bytes: The power of Modular Reuse

Paul Barnes, Rob Smart, Anthony Kirkham, 5 minute read

We’re pleased to bring you the latest in a new series of video shorts, Pega Express Bytes, designed to provide you with easily digestible best practices and help you deliver even more successful Pega solutions. In the following three-minute video, we talk about something that is of huge value to our clients: reuse

The value of reuse in Pega solutions

If you prefer to read and learn rather than watch and learn, the video content is repeated below in this blog. As always, if you have any questions or comments, please reach out to the Pega Express™ team at [email protected].

[Please log in to Community to watch the following video.]

 
So, let’s talk about reuse, the benefits it can deliver, and how to approach and apply reuse in a modern Pega implementation.

Applying modern reuse in Pega implementations

Let’s start with why we do it. Building for reuse makes process development cheaper, easier, more scalable, and ultimately faster. That’s why reuse is core to the Pega Platform™ experience. But modern reuse in Pega doesn’t mean making multiple copies of the same rule. Instead, we create small building blocks that can be assembled to form an end-to-end process. Good examples of this are ”Make a payment,“ ”Update a customer address,” and “Send a communication.“ 

We package these reusable blocks together in small, lightweight applications called modules. You can add modules to any application that needs to use its features. Each module focuses on one area of functionality. Taking “Update a customer address” as an example, it involves a single data object, the address record, and only needs to contain a few rules to perform actions upon it, such as connectors, Data Pages, and properties. If you create tens or hundreds of small self-contained modules, you start building a library that you can reuse across all applications.

We begin by identifying reuse candidates as early as we can. You won’t know all of your reuse candidates upfront, and that’s fine. It’s an ongoing process as your applications evolve. Professional developers create the reusable blocks in Dev Studio, App Studio, or a combination of the two, and make them available for process developers to assemble into a business workflow, a Case Type, in App Studio.

In Pega Infinity™ ‘23, a new Reuse Library feature makes it even easier to find and assemble the right blocks in App Studio for a seamless authoring experience. As your reuse library grows over time, assembling your workflows becomes faster because you’ve got a lot of what you need already built!
    
Architecting in modules moves away from monolithic frameworks towards applications that bring agility to how you build, test, deploy and govern your applications. This modular approach makes the best use of Pega’s Situational Layer Cake™ and Center-out™ approach and focuses on encapsulation and extensibility of business, integration, and utility-based functionality.

Reuse Strategy


Modularity also makes it super simple to model your business architecture in Pega Platform.

Reuse Strategy

If we put all of this together, it’s why many of our clients are now building applications four times faster than they used to and why reuse is a Pega Express best practice — it leverages the power of Pega and accelerates speed to value. 

Happy Reusing!

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About the Author

Paul Barnes, Senior Director, Business Intelligence – Intelligent Automation

For over 25 years, Paul Barnes has been guiding companies to solve their most difficult business problems and reach their mission critical goals using technology and innovation. At Pega, Paul is responsible for helping clients extract maximum business benefits from Pega’s low-code platform for AI-powered decisioning and workflow automation. Leading the Business Excellence function on Pega’s Go To Market team, he defines best practices for both technology and organizational transformation across all points of the low-code continuum... from citizen developers to fusion teams to enterprise transformation programs.

Rob Smart, Principal Solutions Architect

With an 18-year career spanning application development and solution architecture, Rob Smart excels in designing and deploying digital process automation solutions across diverse landscapes. Having previously thrived in the financial services industry of London and Jersey, Rob brought his wealth of expertise to Pega in 2016. Over the course of six years, he made significant contributions as a Senior Solutions Architect (SSA), Lead Solutions Architect (LSA), and Principal Solutions Architect (PSA) within Pega Consulting. Recognizing his passion for customer success, Rob transitioned to the Solutions Consulting Architects team in 2022, where he delights in guiding clients and prospects on leveraging Pega's technology to effectively address their most complex challenges.

Anthony Kirkham, Pega Express Director, Pegasystems

Anthony Kirkham is a Pega Express Director with over 20 years of experience delivering solutions to clients of all shapes and sizes. He started his working life as a developer in the UK, and is now based in Sydney, seven years into his Pega journey. He spent three years as a Project Delivery Lead (PDL) before joining the Pega Express team in 2019. Anthony enjoys helping to drive the adoption of best practices and supporting clients, partners, and colleagues to achieve great things with Pega.
 

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