Starting Your Mendix Program

Last modified: July 4, 2025

Introduction

In this section, you will learn all you need to know to kick off your Mendix program.
By the end of this section, you will be able to:

  • Explain the benefits of using the agile framework to work with Mendix.
  • Build your first Mendix project team.
  • Arrange Academy training for your team.
  • Organize a successful program kick-off.

Introduction to Agile

Defining and honing your development process is a critical factor in program success. By nature of low-code, the Agile Framework is the best way to work with Mendix.

Understanding how to work in Agile allows organizations to stay responsive to change and reduce time-to-market by nearly 50%. Mendix highlights these benefits by providing capabilities such as sprints, story management, and integrated feedback management within the platform itself.

Follow the Agile Awareness Learning Path in the Academy to train your team in the Agile Framework and how it will define your Mendix journey.

Identifying Your First Mendix Project Team

Ensuring you have the right people in the right roles is a critical step in successfully getting started. Everyone participating should be interested and enthusiastic about learning how to leverage this powerful platform, how to constantly improve collaboration and best practices across roles and groups within the BizDevOps model, and how the work they’ll be doing will bring value to end-users and the overall organization.

Setting Up your Agile Scrum Team

Mendix recommends working in an Agile Scrum Team that is already familiar with the Agile Framework. This framework allows development teams to collaborate better, respond to change, and continuously incorporate user feedback. You can find out more from the Agile Awareness Learning Path) in the Academy.

It is important to have small cross-functional teams to make sure that knowledge of all aspects is available within the team, and that all roles are covered. If needed, a person can take on multiple roles as long as they have the skills, expertise, and time to commit to each role. Ideal Scrum Teams are composed of five to seven people, never exceeding nine for larger enterprises.

Getting all the required knowledge in each team might be difficult while keeping your team small, efficient, and aligned. Mendix considers a Scrum team as a juncture of a core team and accelerators.

The core team is made up of the following:

  • Product Owner (PO) — Responsible for defining the direction of a project. They have a clear understanding of what the business and users need from the product being developed and the value to be delivered, and they translate these needs to the Scrum team. Ideally, a PO would have these five key skills & characteristics.. The PO is expected to do the following:

    • Be a liaison between the business and the development team to build, prioritize, and manage the backlog to drive production forward.
    • Ensure the product being developed delivers the required value for the business and users.
    • Accept or reject the completed work.

  • Scrum Master (SM) — Ensures that the team follows Agile best practices and oversees addressing and removing any productivity blockers that may come up. Essentially, the SM is the authority in Agile and Scrum, and keeps the team working together efficiently and effectively. The SM is expected to do the following:

    • Be a supportive leader.
    • Help POs define the product’s value, plan work, and manage the backlog.
    • Help developers self-organize.

  • Development Team — Consists of the people who actually build the app. They are responsible for turning requirements into functionality, based on the input provided by the Product Owner. The development team:

    • Is comprised of one or more people with the skills needed to build the product as envisioned by the PO.
    • May be comprised of non-developers and traditional developers alike: architects, writers, technical BAs, designers, and other specialized roles can all be part of the development team.
    • Work with the SM in the key Scrum activities of sprint planning, sprint review, retrospectives and daily standups to keep their assigned tasks on track with high-quality code during each sprint, while working towards continuous improvement as a team.

Accelerators are the following:

  • Business Analyst (BA) or Subject Matter Expert (SME) — They get involved when a team requires detailed knowledge about such subjects as UX/UI, QA, testing and integration.
  • Business Owner — The primary stakeholder who is ultimately responsible and accountable for the end-result of the project and product, including the actual value delivered.
  • Stakeholders — The end-users of the product under development, who represent strategical, tactical, and operational levels of the business.

Your team does not have to fit this exact mold, but it is important that all the responsibilities outlined here are covered to ensure success in your low-code program. This is a typical team structure:

Additional Resources

Arranging Academy Training for Your Team

Properly training your Mendix team helps accelerate your time to first value and promotes long-term low-code success. It helps each team member take charge of their own success and the overall team’s success.

Take the time to familiarize yourself with the Mendix Academy. It includes a variety of learning paths and individual courses for various roles and diverse backgrounds. This allows you to customize the learning journey for each team member and role. Once you are familiar with the various guides, diverse topics and individual courses, create a training plan with each team member based on their role and experience.

This is a sample template:

It will vary based on the specific people taking each role. A Scrum Master who used to be a full-stack developer could take the Crash Course instead of the Become a Rapid Developer course. An EA may need to add Native Mobile or Configure Advanced Security for your particular organization, project and team needs.

Mendix Certificates

Mendix provides four different certification levels to measure developer maturity, each with an increasing level of required skill and experience:

Rapid Developer Certification

A Rapid Developer has a baseline knowledge of the Mendix platform and knows where to find information using the documentation and the Mendix community.

This certification is proof of basic Mendix knowledge, and demonstrates that someone can join a project team and independently build prototypes.

The Rapid Developer certification is a minimum requirement for working in Mendix. Before taking a certification exam, there is required coursework for each level. All courses can be instructor-led or self-led.

You can find all the details about the certification, as well as the required coursework here.

As your team grows and takes on more projects, it's important to continue to also level up on your Mendix expertise.

Intermediate Developer Certification

An Intermediate Developer has the fundamental knowledge of the Mendix platform to start building the next great apps.

This certification is proof that someone is ready to be added to operating teams, and can contribute from the start by applying knowledge and skills in different parts of the project development lifecycle.

You can find information and the required courseware for the Intermediate certification here.

Advanced Developer Certification

An Advanced Developer has the knowledge and skills required to build production-ready apps.

This certification is proof of someone’s advanced knowledge of the platform and their professional experience with developing Mendix apps.

You can find information and the required courseware for the Advanced certification here.

Expert Developer Certification

The Expert Developer Certificate is not only proof of Mendix knowledge, but it also confirms a developer’s expertise and shows they have applied what they know about Mendix in their day-to-day job.

You can find information and the required courseware for the Advanced certification here.

Organizing Your Program Kick-Off

The program kick-off is important to hold before the project kick-off. This meeting ensures alignment across all groups and team members involved on goals, vision, and value. It sets the foundation for aligning business and IT as you begin your Mendix journey.

Attendants

Make sure to include the relevant business and IT leaders, project team members, other stakeholders, Mendix and/or Mendix partner team members. The attendance of your executive sponsor is also recommended.

Agenda

A sample agenda of a successful program kickoff can include:

  • A round of introductions

  • Why Mendix was chosen

  • Business and IT alignment on:

    • Organizational challenges and needs Mendix is solving (this is where your low-code vision will be very important — you always need to be able to tie Mendix work back to the larger business needs)
    • An overview of the Mendix vision and strategy for your organization:
      • Goals and success at both the organizational and project levels
      • Important milestones
      • Value measurement and impact
    • Identifying initial concerns or challenges and building mitigation plans

  • Establishing a cadence for this group to meet going forward for a business review, which can be quarterly, monthly, every two months