A headless commerce system is a marvel of flexibility. You start by building an ideal frontend platform —the “head” that integrates with headless commerce and/or CMS platforms . That empowers you to craft unique customer experiences and intuitive user interfaces that strengthen your brand and business.
Best of all, you can do it fast. Introducing new features, implementing new user interfaces, adding new touch points and releasing software can happen in two or three weeks — a quantum-leap over legacy commerce systems that lock the frontend and backend together, slowing development to a snail’s pace.
But you shouldn’t underestimate the intricacies of making all this happen. You need a robust methodology and strong buy-in from everybody involved — UI and system designers, coders and team leaders, operations and support teams, marketers and analytics experts. Here’s a quick look at pulling them all together.
Agile and DevOps: Essential Methodologies for Headless Commerce
The old waterfall methodology where you create a list of requirements and build out a system over many months is so slow and rigid that it defeats the purpose of adopting headless commerce. That’s why headless developers typically prefer Agile and DevOps methodologies.
- This methodology is ideal for both implementing a headless system and developing new features in your customer experience. Scrum master-led teams and sprints generate usable software over a short time frame, typically two or three weeks. Each ensuing sprint iterates with new features and fixes for current problems with the previous product.
- DevOps. The core principle of DevOps is managing your software release cycle quickly and effectively to enable continuous improvements. With rapid software releases and updates, you need an effective monitoring system to ensure that any glitches in the software get communicated back to developers so they can fix them in ensuing releases.
Securing Buy-in For Your Headless Transition
Getting everything working in unison with headless commerce requires buy-in from everybody. Although Agile and DevOps optimize speed and flexibility, these methodologies still require time-intensive steps like drawing up requirements and rollout plans, and then distributing them to everybody who needs them. Thus, all of the teams — business, marketing, development and operations — responsible for designing, building and implementing your headless system must be on board and moving together.
Buy-in also means convincing executives, middle managers and rank-and-file employees of the importance of the transition. The complexity of your environment and the age of your current systems will help determine how much training and change management you’ll need.
Your Partner for Fast, Nimble Headless Commerce
There’s no doubt that the future of commerce is headless. To thrive in a rapidly evolving marketplace, you need nimble frontend software that communicates with backend systems without the shackles of legacy monolithic commerce packages.
DMI’s experts have been enabling digital commerce for decades, which gives us the breadth of experience and knowhow to ensure our clients get the headless solution that best suits their business needs. Our system architects, Agile developers, UI designers and data experts have mastered the tools and methodologies required to thrive in the headless world.
These are the skills you need to stay ahead of the competition.
—Atul Bhammar, senior vice president, solutions architect, digital commerce
