In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, enterprise-level companies are under increasing pressure to deliver software solutions faster, adapt to market changes, and innovate continuously. Yet, balancing the need for speed with enterprise-grade security, scalability, and compliance remains challenging. Low-code platforms offer a potential answer, empowering enterprises to build applications faster while involving non-developers in the process. But with a vast array of platforms available, choosing the right one can be daunting.

This guide is tailored for large enterprises still grappling with the decision of selecting the ideal low-code platform, covering key factors that can help you make a strategic choice. As AI has been playing more like a buzz word role these days many platforms are also pitching AI based capabilities in their platform.

Therefore, to do a holistic comparison with respect to an overall boost in the efficiency of enterprise application development practice with the use of a low-code platform and choose the ideal one for your organization, it is essential to plan for a one-day workshop for a POC with all available platform owners or partners rather than viewing just a demo.

Here are some tips that will help define the scope of a POC for doing a fact check of the low-code platforms and measurable KPIs in developing an enterprise web application.

How to define the functional scope for the POC?

To prepare the functional scope for the POC every organization might need to define its requirements as per daily operational challenges and Include features that take considerable time & effort in the application development lifecycle.

Followings are some indicative pointers that covers majority of tasks developers need to do in every application.

1. Include the requirement for development of relational Web Forms to be used by department users e.g. Invoice creation form with a feature to add multiple line items in the invoice.
2. Include the requirements of some related features as suggested below.
   1. Input field validations.
   2. One or two step approval workflows.
   3. Email notification.
   4. Keyword search response.
   5. API development to add, find, update and delete a record.
   6. Dashboard (Basic Charts)
   7. Audit trail of user activities
   8. Department management by Admin user.
   9. Department wise user management by admin user.
   10. Master data management by department / admin user.
   11. Localization capability.
   12. Encryption of sensitive data in the database.
3. Include requirement that demands creation of separate tables in the database.
4. Include features that require role based access control.
5. Include requirement of multiple departments using the same application in isolated manner.
6. Include requirement that ensures basic features like updating and soft deletion of entries.
7. Include the feature for bulk uploading that ensures easy migration of existing data.
8. Include feature that requires integration with external system. Make sure that access to working APIs required for integration is provided to the developers at the time of POC.
9. Include few pages showing form data to be made available as public page that does not require login. Let the UI decide by the participants.
10. Define the weightage of each piece of requirement based on the complexity and time taken by the developers in your current practice.
11. Define some changes in the given requirement after completion of the original scope e.g. add new fields in the form, change validation rules etc.
12. Decide total time to be allowed for doing the POC (In Hrs.)
13. Decide a venue for the POC where computers with necessary access rights can be provided to the participants.
14. Legacy data for migration, at least 10000 records.

Measurable KPIs

1. Actual time taken in completion of the POC (In Hrs.)
2. Percentage of accomplishment in provided timeline based on the defined weightage.
3. Size of code files (HTML, CSS, JS, JAVA, PHP etc.) written and deployed manually from outside the platform.
4. Time taken in implementing the change and deployment at the server.
5. Activities performed by the participant for making those changes.
6. Changes done from within the platform.
7. Changes done outside the platform and deployment process of these changes.
8. Number of technical people worked for the POC.
9. Value added features developed in addition to the given scope of the POC.
10. Time taken in uploading 10000 records using csv or excel file (for quick performance testing).
11. Do a quick load testing and VAPT to ensure security and performance compliance.
12. Number of critical Issues reported in VAPT.
13. Ability of developers to change the UI using platform’s interface.
14. Ability of developers to download, understand and make changes in the code if platform is not supporting certain features. It is well understood that no platform contains all capabilities to fulfill 100% of the requirement without customization.
15. Ability of developers to easily understand and use the APIs developed in the POC from an external system or mobile app.
16. No. of days needed for new developers to start using the platform and stack of tools that developers need to learn before being productive.
17. Ability of BI team to be able to easily understand the data and build intelligence dashboard.
18. TCO - Total cost of ownership over next 3-5 years that includes hosting cost, user license cot, product license cost etc.

It might be looking extensive and too many stuffs for the one-day workshop, but with the help of low-code platform these activities are possible in just one day workshop.

Please feel free to learn more from our team of experts and choose a right one for you.