Mindtree Technical Lead Shashank on what it takes to build great software today
Shashank Raj is a Product Owner and Technical Lead with Mindtree. He has four years of experience building complex enterprise solutions with a primary focus on the P&C insurance and capital markets sectors. Passionate about emerging technologies, Shashank has experience in delivering IT-enabled business transformations, implementing lean efficiencies into business operations, and driving continual process improvements to complex business problems. We spoke with Shashank about the tools and processes he uses to bring great applications to life.
What types of projects do you work on primarily?
Shashank: I began my career in insurance, but have also worked on financial services software in areas like capital investments and alternative investments. It’s come back around and now I’m working in insurance again. My team is currently building a custom end-to-end insurance platform using Unqork.
What development tools are you using now?
Recently, I’ve done a lot of work with Unqork’s platform. I’ve actually used Unqork in my past three organizations. My Unqork knowledge has been really good for my career. There’s a lot of demand for it. It’s allowed me to move into different companies and into different roles.
How have your teams adapted to a codeless approach?
In my experience, people get trained very quickly. The transition is really smooth. A traditional code-based system could take three-to-four months to learn just the basics. Most people seem to pick up Unqork in 15 to 20 days. The advanced level takes a bit more hands on time, but ramping up to the intermediate level only takes a few weeks.
Has the choice of tools affected the structure of your teams?
Yes. A basic insurance project, for example, traditionally required a huge team: Let’s say five UI engineers, four developers, four middleware specialists, two or three three on the backend, and then a few folks for QR testing. And then of course all the business analysts. So basically around 15 to 20 people, right?
A traditional code-based system could take three-to-four months to learn just the basics. Most people seem to pick up Unqork in 15 to 20 days.
But with Unqork, the same thing can be accomplished by three or four people because the configuration can be done by a business analyst as well. Going from 15 people to three or four is a huge thing.
So, you would say your team can accomplish a lot more now?
Definitely. Using a traditional approach, a basic insurance project takes six months to get to production. Bigger projects can take up to a year. But now, we can build the same project in just one month because all the DevOps are handled by the Unqork platform. We don’t need another team of people who set up the cloud infrastructure because it’s already there.
With Unqork, I can provide the required product in a fourth of the original time and half of the original cost. I have worked with various tech stacks in the past but the ease of access that Unqork provides is unmatchable!
Bigger projects can take up to a year. But now, we can build the same project in just one month because all the DevOps are handled by the Unqork platform.
Have you tried any other platforms in the codeless/no-code space?
Yeah, I’ve tried out bubble.io. I tried to learn it. That took me a very long time. And I’ll be honest, even now, I’m not able to understand most of it. I know some of my colleagues have used Pega. Pega’s basically just low-code. So the comparison would be very brutal because it’s low-code, not no-code. Low-code takes a lot of time. Unqork’s much better than that.
What advice would you give to people who are just starting out with codeless?
I’d say be hands on with the platform itself. Unqork Academy has been a great resource, but I think you really have to do it with your hands. What I do is just open the Academy in one window and on the other, the training environment, and I keep replicating whatever is there on the Academy. I truly believe that if someone does that, I can guarantee they can learn the entire platform.
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