I decided to write down some of the beliefs I have about development on the Salesforce platform. This post was inspired by Things I Believe About Software Engineering by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels.

Development on the Salesforce platform is unique, working on packaged enterprise solutions is always challenging with each having its own quirks (think SAP and transports).

Despite what Salesforce marketing wants you to think, custom development on Salesforce is a necessity for most companies. The no-code mantra is very strong within the community (some will think this is an understatement). This leads to people being pigeonholed down one track or the other. I don’t subscribe to this differentiation between admins/developers or low-code devs vs pro-code devs.

No matter what your role is, you need strong fundamentals in problem-solving and knowledge of the platform to be truly effective in your role as a Salesforce professional. That is to say, when I use the term “Salesforce Development” it extends to both custom development (Apex, Aura, LWC etc) and point-and-click features (Process Builder, Flows and Workflows etc).

The list is in no particular order and others will have more extreme views. Especially those that don’t work on the platform on a full-time basis.

  • Knowledge of software development or building technical solutions outside of the Salesforce ecosystem is a premium worth paying for
  • Dev Ops, code quality, security and documentation should be given more importance
  • Testing on the Salesforce platform can be the biggest impediment to sprint velocity
  • Truly collaborative teams are the most effective teams on the Salesforce platform
  • Speed of delivery will continue to dictate the features used to build solutions on the Salesforce platform
  • Working with Salesforce support is such a tedious and laborious process that people actively avoid it

Working on the Salesforce platform is challenging, that much is a given. But it is also incredibly rewarding when done correctly and there is strong alignment between the business users and implementation team. I might compile another list some day titled “Things I Love about the Salesforce Platform”.