From Code to Low-Code: Community, Best Practices, and the Future of Tech Careers

Today's guest is from Sydney , Australia . He's a founder of XS Logic . He was first awarded as MVP in 2024 . He's versatile and dynamic IT professional with vast experience in delivering multi-platform projects and solutions . He's an active community member and loves to give back to the community .

You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , Zeeshan . Hi , Mark , Good to have you on the show . Sir , Tell me you're in Sydney , Australia , right ? I used to live in Sydney . Is that where you're based ?

So yeah , because we usually eat our traditional dishes at home , traditional dishes at home . But when we dine out we focus and we tend to try different cuisines , different foods , so that we can have different flavors , because Sydney is a multicultural society so it's never too hard to grab what you want .

I know there are two different fields development and project management . So from the educational and academic background I am more focused on project management and scrum delivery lead positions . But from the tech side , I always enjoy loving tech . So I started as a dev . From the ProCode side . I landed up into a ProCode senior solutions architect position .

Then I've tried , I think I've thought about like ProCode is . I've done a lot in ProCode right . So around nine years back I've moved my paradigm to and focused on the CRM , the low-code side . So yeah , so when I started to be honest with you , when I started with my low-code journey , there was not a lot of motivation . I was getting right .

So one of my close friends so one of my close friends , arafat Arafat Nassim , told me and suggested me to join the community . So I've joined the local community , sydney community and the online communities as well . And as soon as I got involved in the community .

Oh my God , this changed my life , this boost of my motivation which I was lacking on moving from pro code to low code side . You can imagine like I've been into a few conversations with the pro codes as well that there's a change management piece which they need to move over .

But as soon as I joined the community , I've got the support and you can't imagine within six months I've passed all of my certifications one star , two star and the third star one as well . So since then , I'm giving back . So it's more of like I've got from the community . Now it's my time to give it back .

So it's more of like I've got from the community . Now it's my time to give it back . So I've started my own online community as well and started giving back . So , slowly and gradually , this thing happens and now I'm leading the Sydney BizApps community as well . Yeah , so that was pretty awesome .

The community , the change , the tech side , people are willing to help . It's heaven . And when you are in the community , to be honest , you get support , what you need . So even now , if I need some tech assistance and tech advice , I just to do a few calls and I got everything what I need . Same as goes for the other side as well .

If someone needs it , yes , I need to jump in it's . It's the thing . The tech community side yeah , so yeah , I've been been into different positions as well . Now I founded my own company and started my own consultancy as well , so yeah , Awesome , awesome .

What's your , what's your feeling of of the economy at the moment , and particularly for people in ? You know either the power platform or dynamics yeah .

To be honest , yes , the market is cooled down a little bit because December , november and December and January is always quiet because people are going on leaves and there's not much hiring at the moment . But , overall , if I see recession didn't hit the dynamics market yet , I can say that there are quite a few jobs out there .

So , yes , there are always concerns about jobs out there . So , yes , there are always a concern about , like , okay , permanent jobs or the contracting jobs . They're two different options , but I can see A lot of options are there . But it's a cool time , so I think it should bubble up again in February definitely .

So I started my own consultancy to to tap into the other side as well and basically the thing was to provide more support to the market and learn more . Obviously , that's one thing , but what I find in the market which have a gap is there's no , no one's offering a lot of best practices in the power platform . It's governance side and everything .

So my aim of my consultancy is like provide best practices because you can adapt power platform , anyone can adapt power platform , adapting it to a right approach , have a right mindset , because when we adapt the Power Platform and Dynamics 365 environment together and implement it together , things can go really , really wild .

You can say , because if there's no proper governance , if there's no proper practice in place , you end up doing a lot of things . So I'll give you an example I've seen a lot of implementation of D365 sales . In sales , they're only using accounts and contacts and they're modified and they customize the entire thing . On top of it .

They're modified and they customize the entire thing on top of it . So my approach is when you adapt a particular application or a particular product , use it with maximum productivity . Needs , right , which comes out of the box , like accounts , contacts , opportunities , everything , for example .

If you're not using that , what I see , the customer is wasting a lot of money on the customizations and not getting big bang for the buck . So my aim is to implement a best practice and utilize out-of-the-box feature instead of creating customized options on top of it .

So it will benefit both of the parties , right Microsoft using the Microsoft product entirely end-to-end stack , and the customer as well , like they're not paying more and getting maximum benefit out of that particular application itself .

Yeah , so right now , I'm more of like focusing on the real-time marketing migration which is happening in Customer Insights Journey and data , which is super cool . The new features in Customer Insights Data which we can tap into external data sources is awesome . So , yeah , I'm currently involved in that particular project . So , yeah , enjoying it Nice , nice .

So and adapted to that particular situation because in some companies , like the environment , the requirements are not final , not polished . So , yeah , I started with one-liner and then adapted to that particular situation . So in that particular project , I led like around 20 devs solution architect . Yeah , so it was a massive , a big one .

Yeah , so implemented well and till the data warehousing . So it's a yeah , and it's still going through . That was the first biggest project in Dynamics 365 . The other big project which I am still really proud of is an ERP , end-to-end ERP and it's a custom NET application ERP for automotive dealers .

So I've started this when I started my career , so I started as a dev on that particular ERP . Then we revamped as I become a solution architect for that particular application , I've revamped the entire ERP and it's running since last 15 years in five different Toyota dealerships .

Yes , really proud of so , because I'm now in the dynamics and power platform world , so my more focus is going on adapting to low-code approach as well in the same particular application . So the application is there . It's 15 years of work . It's there right .

So the new modules and the new enhancements , what we are doing , we are introducing Dataverse and a Canvas app to that particular application and plugging them and providing a really interactive situation . So if I give you an example AI Builder , power Platform , ai Builder so there's a huge , huge gap in auditing .

You can imagine , like dealership , automotive , dealership parts warehouse it's a massive right . So with small bolts , the bigger bolts , nuts and everything , with the bumpers as well , the big car bumpers as well . So it's a nightmare to audit these sort of things manually audit . So what we have done , we have built up and trained the AI builder on top of that .

So now parts manager can , or inventory manager can go inside a warehouse , take a snap . It will count all of the items and feedback into the DB so that we can do the auditing really easily . So these kind of cool features AI related really easy to implement . And Power Platform gives us a support of tapping into SQL as well . So no brainer .

So yeah , loving that particular feature product , I can say , and I'm really proud of it .

Yeah , so we need to be really vigilant on the data and how we're handling the data itself as well .

So I think that's causing a major shift to the freelancing world . Causing a major shift to the freelancing world Because , if I take an example , if person A is doing their permanent job and that particular job he is really , he's a shining star , right .

And when he tries to adapt to a particular new technology and if the organization is not ready to implement , he can just learn but he cannot implement . So I think that's the reason that people are going more for learning curves , because people can learn right from videos with tutorials and from the courses as well .

But the real challenge and real thing comes up when it's about implementation . Right , if you don't have a use case , a live use case , it's hard to implement , it's hard to make an experience out of it . I think yeah .

So I've seen a few organizations like turning off co-pilots because they don't have a policy yet , so they need to adapt to a policy in order to adapt to the particular thing . Yeah , so there's a little gap there , but few organizations , as compared to the ones like smaller startups , are getting full benefit of it , which I love to see .

Yeah so , yeah , that's what my thinking is like , why people are moving to the freelancing and the consultancy .