Whether you started your digital transformation to support working at home during COVID-19, to improve customer experience, or to more quickly adapt to the market, there is no doubt this path can be difficult and confusing at times. It often feels like you are “building a plane while flying it,” especially for contact centers where downtime is not an option. Forrester’s Modern Application Development Model (MADM) provides a structured approach to introducing Agile and DevOps practices that will fuel your digital transformation.
It takes a village to drive change, and the MADM framework provides guidance for all aspects of your business. Technology is at the heart of this work but organizational structure, processes, culture, and talent are all key pieces of this framework and have a role to play. MADM envisions a new organization, founded on Agile and DevOps principles, automation, and low or no code. It is designed to facilitate moving quickly through strong collaboration, independence, and autonomy.
Read on for more information about how MADM can help organizations, and watch the recording of our webinar about MADM.
A Tale of Two Companies
Modern application development helps companies achieve greater efficiency, faster response to market changes, higher quality, and better customer experience. When the pandemic hit, organizations that had started their digital transformations with a MADM framework differentiated themselves from those organizations thrown into making changes due to necessity.
Companies that had started their digital transformation journey early saw the positive impact unexpectedly in the pandemic. They had developed practices that helped them adapt to the ever-evolving situation and go beyond the minimum response, whether there were new customer expectations or unforeseen complications like supply chain disruptions. Once they made it through the initial rush of changes, companies who had started down this new path were able to continue to pursue their previously-created roadmaps. They could leverage new practices, processes, and technology to tackle more mundane, familiar changes going forward, such as new competitive threats and changing regulations.
One of Cyara’s customers, a global health insurance provider based in the US, described how their transition to MADM practices helped them move faster throughout their development and testing process using Cyara’s Automate CX Assurance Platform:
Our development and testing process was primarily manual and deployment typically took 5-8 months. Agile and DevOps required us to go to 2-3 week sprints, which was not possible with the current process.
On the other hand, contact centers with legacy on-premise solutions and waterfall approaches found themselves needing to pivot to cloud solutions at a moment’s notice. Without frameworks like MADM, these organizations were able to take the first necessary steps but often stalled after the initial rush to adapt. The transition to the cloud alone did not enable the many other benefits that MADM offers.
CX at the Core
CX is the bellwether for organizations’ improved results after a structured digital transformation process. As we reported earlier this year, meeting constantly-changing customer expectations is the new normal, not a nice-to-have, and has a significant impact on financial results. Given the speed that CX needs to change, it’s virtually impossible to adapt without technology tools and repeatable processes to make it happen. Customers benefit from the impact of MADM practices through new features and better service even while the world is changing rapidly.
MADM guides the adoption of new technology and rapid iteration, but also provides the structure to guide organizations through creating these new practices. This transformation starts with technology change, builds with new practices and philosophy, and filters through the organization to drive flawless CX.
Testing: The Missing Puzzle Piece
Not surprisingly, testing is a key part of MADM. Bugs and unintended consequences still occur even with a streamlined agile approach. Without testing, problems with technology can sour the customer’s opinion of your company – all it takes is one call with bad audio quality or one unsuccessful interaction with a chatbot. The MADM testing approach mirrors the iteration and adaptability of the rest of the process. Testing should be continuous, automated with tools that assure live agent voice quality and chatbot performance, and integrated across all aspects of the business. Forrester’s Diego Lo Guidice describes the centrality of testing to MADM:
…[W]ell-tested software avoids destroying customer experience, since customers never see the bugs — they get identified and fixed earlier in the development process. Thanks to test automation in its continuous delivery process, Intesa Sanpaolo captured 700 bugs as it released new features of its flagship mobile application into production throughout the last 12 months. Thus, test automation is essential to any modern application delivery process.
Forrester predicts that we will see significant movement to Modern Application Development throughout 2022. Testing completes the package of a new approach to development and operations. No longer do you need to sacrifice speed for quality, ensuring you delight your customers and stay ahead of the game.
Guidance on Your Modern Application Development Journey
Forrester’s Modern Application Development Model touches virtually every part of an organization. How do you consider all the implications and build a plan to adopt MADM? If you have started down this path, how do you assess your progress? How does an organization know they have been successful with MADM?
If you are looking for guidance on your digital transformation, view our webinar “A Framework for your Digital Transformation” with guest speaker Diego Lo Giudici, VP & Principal Analyst at Forrester. In the webinar, Diego walked through the MADM framework, reviewed its benefits, and discussed how organizations can leverage the model in their digital transformation. No matter where you are in your journey, Diego’s presentation will help you determine what’s next in your transformation and how you can continue to drive value with modern development practices.
