Pega Express Values for Business Architects

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This webinar covered learn how, as a Business Architect, Pega Express values and best practices are relevant for you in your role and how you can apply them, to help your project be a success and build great solutions.

Presented By:

Brad Tanner Consulting Manager, Banking & Capital Markets - EMEA Consulting Pegasystems

Anthony Kirkham Pega Express Director - APAC Pegasystems

Laura Saez Gomez Lead Business Architect, Banking & Capital Markets - EMEA Consulting Pegasystems

Joan Du Triou Pega Express Delivery Lead  - EMEA Pegasystems

We hope you understand we couldn't get to every question during our Q&A session, but we'd like to provide answers to as many as we can.

Check them out below:

What if my client uses a Waterfall methodology?

While Scrum is one of our best practices and our preferred delivery framework, some of our clients work in a pure or predominantly Waterfall environment. The good news is that the majority of our best practices can easily align with Waterfall. In fact, this is a good example of how our best practices can be integrated into different delivery frameworks to provide the optimum delivery approach for a particular organization. The best practices of building for reuse, using DevOps capabilities for deployments, co-production, a centre of excellence etc. are all equally valid within a Waterfall or Agile environment. Organizations do lose some agility using Waterfall, which is why Scrum is our preference, but Pega Express best practices do not constrain or slow delivery down on a Waterfall project; they continue to speed the delivery process up and add a lot of value.

How do I know which best practice to prioritise?​

Our 18 best practices are nicely laid out at https://community.pega.com/project/express-values.

They are not in priority order, but you will want to prioritise them. One method we use at Pega is to apply the heat map tool approach. We research the current delivery practices, and identify opportunities for improvement by comparing against our best practices. We assign a RAG status against each best practice based on current ways of working within an organisation / project. By following this process, it will allow you to focus on the top 5, top 3 etc. You can then prioritise from a smaller list depending on the biggest gap / opportunity. Note that this is an art more than a science, and research is key to understanding what your main challenges are.

Has anything changed in Pega Express? Do we still deliver using the 4 phases?

The content of Pega Express and the way in which we work and get the most of Pega Platform has not changed. Instead, we are changing the way we present and talk about Pega Express; to help you, our clients and partners understand how you can use some (or all) of our best practices to augment your own ways of working. At Pega, we use Pega Express when we lead projects. We use the phase driven approach (Discover, Prepare, Build and Adopt) which encompasses all of our values and best practices. We find that the phased delivery approach provides the best delivery experience, provides strong risk mitigation and provides the highest potential for delivering successful outcomes, so we are always delighted when our clients and partners adopt our phase driven approach. However we understand that it is not for everyone, and that is why we have distilled values and best practices from our phased approach and also talk about a value driven approach.

What happens if my client does not like the name of 'DCO' or 'design thinking'?​

Our advice is to use terminology that our clients and partners prefer to use. Following the best practice and the outcomes that helps to achieve is much more important than the terms we use. For example, if the phrase 'Directly Capture Objectives' does not resonate, but 'Collaboration workshops' or 'Pega workshops' do resonate, and the aims of the workshops are the same (e.g. to collaborate and make design decisions, capturing the model in Pega) then the name is not important. The outcomes are.

How early should we be applying these best practices? Do some come first? Is there a logical order?​

There are several best practices that we feel are important to follow from the very beginning i.e. business outcomes, business value and design thinking. The best practices that are associated with the values of 'Solve the business problem' and 'design great experiences' are ones that we recommend you prioritise at the start. It is also very important to have a delivery framework that will support your organization and project, so we governance, planning and centre of excellence combine to provide an excellent framework. Once the project is underway, all of the best practices are equally important in theory, although in practice their importance will vary depending on your environment. For example, if you are designing a headless decisioning engine, then user experience may be less prominent, and Microjourney accelerators more prominent.

Thank you again for attending, and we hope to see you at our upcoming events. 

You can find the full schedule on our Pega Community Events page.

File Attachments

BA Webinar for PE Month 2023 - Pega Express Values for Business Architects.pdf