It was clear at PegaWorld Inspire that the top brass at the low code development firm were very excited about their new workflow builder Pega GenAI Blueprint.
First unveiled in March 2024, Blueprint is Pegasytems’ (Pega) new SaaS capability that integrates generative AI into the ideation stage of the initial design phase for application development.
The platform promises to provide business users with a seamless web-based interface through which they can reimagine business processes and quickly generate a blueprint for an application using just a couple of sentences.
With collaboration built in, Blueprint will allow multiple users to tweak the workflow according to their needs once the initial concept for the application is provided. Users can instantly preview what the application will look like across multiple devices, as well as the case types for the app and the personas it serves.
These application blueprints can be downloaded and dropped straight into the Pega Platform to build the process, or simply used as a jumping-off point from which to get the ideas flowing.
During an executive roundtable, CEO Alan Trefler said even he was surprised by the creative ability of the Blueprint engine, which combines generative and statistical AI and Pega’s best practices to generate new ideas for how the process could work, including case types, processes, or personas.
In his opening address at PegaWorld, Trefler announced that 500 Pega customers have been given access to the tool since it was teased in March, and in that time they have really embraced the tool.
“We’ve had 30,000 blueprints created by customers and partners and prospects in the last five weeks, which from my point of view is just mind blowing,” he said.
During a media briefing ahead of the opening keynote, Don Schuerman, CTO at Pegasystems, said that this was the fastest customer adoption of any product Pega had released to date, indicating the company has struck upon a clear sticking point for many businesses.
Blueprint’s true value comes in fostering better collaboration between development and business segments
Whether these blueprints will actually live through the development cycle and turn into real applications is still somewhat up in the air.
When asked about the number of blueprints converted in functional applications during the executive roundtable, Trefler was unable to provide a figure, saying he expects to have the stats within a month or two. He did note, however, that the intent was certainly there from their customers.
“I can tell you we’ve got hundreds of customers who have downloaded them into an application environment.”
But whether or not Blueprint will be the complete end-to-end conception to delivery app development tool misses where the true value of this tool lies, according to Kieran Gilmurray, CEO at Digital Automation and Robotics Limited.
Gilmurray told ITPro that beyond actually getting real applications built, Blueprint can help unblock the path towards delivery and get all stakeholders in an organization on the same page about what they are trying to achieve and how best to go about it.
“When everybody talks about delivery they talk about something different, so when you’re asking is it going to create the application and do it all for you from beginning, middle, and end and sort out all your legacy [systems], no its not. But the biggest thing in business, it's just business and technology teams not communicating effectively together,” he explained.
“If you can get really great technology people and really great business people in a room and get them to communicate effectively. Blueprint will allow you to communicate around a common understanding”.
“If I can see what it looks like across web, mobile, and desktop…, you’ve just removed so many barriers to making genuine progress. That’s why I see it as an effective tool, platform, accelerant, just to get stuff done and businesses need that. Otherwise nobody moves, everybody ends up in a fight,” he remarked.
“That blueprint to give you a visualization of how it’s going to perform and allow you to design it without having to whiteboard it, rub it out, do whatever, fantastic, I think that will be popular.”
