Low-Code is starting to blow up as an enterprise IT megatrend. But is this space ready for its time in the sun?
Like many fellow veterans of the enterprise software world, I developed a healthy skepticism of the concept of low-code/no-code development tools over the last 25 years. I found it hard to stop seeing them as simply glorified site builders, functional templates for simple processes, or marketing content management systems.
Indeed, early players in this area produced a few brow-furrowing offerings over the years that either proved not as easy to use as advertised, or more often, were not sophisticated enough to adapt to evolving standards or scale to meet enterprise needs.
However, I enjoy challenging my own cognitive biases, and lately, I’ve gained a fresh perspective on low-code. Past limitations are falling away for customers of low-code solutions, small and large.
I find myself reflecting on the past year after disembarking from the OutSystems Nextstep event last week in Denver. I’ve talked to several customers who are seeing real results using low-code development solutions, and participated in events with several other leading low-code vendors and peers who joined in on the discussion.
So here, in no particular order, are 8 new low-code wrinkles I gained in my cortex this year:
- Low-code is not just for simple apps, and sometimes, it’s even better for very large-scale apps.
If a low-code transformation is approached from the beginning with an architectural mindset for modularity, there is no reason why a low-code application can’t benefit from all of the goodness afforded by today’s highly scalable, hybrid IT and cloud-native deployment environments.
But low-code can also shine in how it improves the quality and utility of massive data sets. One key aspect of leaders in low code is the ability to semantically define incoming data from integrations, in order to make it functionally usable in the resulting user apps. Therefore, you gain both data hygiene and reusability as your data stream turns into a data lake, built right into the platform.
- Citizen Development does not create Shadow IT. Ungoverned development does.
There’s a bit of a rogue reputation to out-of-the-box development tools. Non-technical, line-of-business employees, fed up with not getting the functionality they want from IT, go and ring up a low-cost, no-code required tool and start chaotically producing apps without governance.
In reality, Citizen Development is the opposite of this scenario. With governance throughout adoption, citizen developers get a critical seat at the table for the organization’s development plans. Low-code developers of all technical levels crave governance, guidelines and safety controls, with fast feedback loops, so that the applications they are producing will add sustainable value to the business.
- Adoption can start out as budget-driven, but end up being value-driven.
EDP Energy, a leading multi-million household energy provider in Brazil, needed to replace a completely fragmented manual front end for billing, operations and a atop their old Delphi and SAP data sources with what you might call a big-bang low code implementation, because even an incremental services decoupling process would be too slow, and too costly to maintain.
Their brand new cross-enterprise app, launched on Outsystems in less than a year by a team of less than ten developers, takes in scads of data from SCADA systems in plants, generation and transmission lines, and provides the company with everything from operational analytics and controls, all the way to customer billing atop a massive data lake.
“We just look at ongoing development as a continuous balance sheet or ledger, and we can keep adding value to the project as it scales to meet stakeholder needs, rather than talk about ‘projects and changes’ for the app,” said William Durante, project lead for Mindshare, EDP’s development partner.
- Low-code overlaps with DPA and ITSM, but only slightly.
We’re seeing some ITSM (IT service management), DPA (digital process automation) and business process platforms that can instantly surface pretty good functional apps on their own accord. There may be a little less control over the presentation layer, but it’s worth watching as an alternate route to low-code for some.
Conversely, because DPA platforms and ITSM tools are great at structuring output to meet workflow needs, most good low-code solutions can ingest or templatize these sources, even allowing new cross-functional UX to be bolted onto the resulting apps – for instance, combining purchase, personalized service and IT support workflows.
Despite any perceived solution overlap, it seems that the most highly responsive implementations incorporate the best of all three worlds to mobilize process design, execution, development and support around customer needs.
- You can still use technically skilled people, but you might need less of them.
The rockstar low-code developer isn’t always who you expect.
“Our skill mix is very different in a low code environment – I still need a senior architect to provide direction of the platform, but people with extensive app dev experience may not be the right fit, since you don’t code as much – instead, you assemble product with customers,” says Devin Parsons, head of digital transformation at bSwift, a major healthcare app provider.
“Citizen developers need a clear line of sight into how their application is actually being used. Is it a driver in a truck or an administrator on the back end using the product? When you build a product in 6 weeks instead of 6 months – you don’t have time for some of the inefficiency of traditional requirements-based app dev.”
- Low-code and no-code still need some code, so verify compatibility and partner skills
Except for net-new apps, customers that realistically adopt a low-code platform still expect to write some code for adaptation and integration, the technical director of a large real-estate development firm told me.
So check on the vendor, as well as any integration service partners you invite to the table – if you are a big .NET shop, check on their support of .NET / C#. If you are running core systems on SAP, check on proven examples of an ABAP integration.
That said, you should still insist on reducing the actual amount of coding required by 80% or more, or why bother going low-code at all? Just because developers can code, doesn’t mean they want to be coding redundant functionality. You can be sure that technical developers will appreciate templates that remove toil while increasing the focus of any coding needed on delivering differentiated value.
- Gains can be realized far faster than by expanding conventional development teams.
In today’s hyper-competitive market for technical talent, simply hiring the best developers away from hot startups with stock options, or poaching them from the Googles, Ubers and Amazons of the world, just isn’t an option most companies or non-profit organizations can afford.
From within its own ranks, Salvation Army recruited a new class of low-code Citizen Developers to work alongside a smaller number of pro developers to build a range of applications using the AgilePoint platform, from simple internal-facing apps to complex external facing applications, and reduced average development time per function point by 80%.
- Success requires a design-thinking mindset.
Companies really go for the ability to design and publish an app with drag and drop efficiency, but the low-code movement goes beyond that to create a more horizontally integrated organization without silos between IT and business.
“When you introduce dynamic mobile apps with a high standard of experience – you set up a design thinking process where your developers should be directly connecting with customers,” said Outsystems CEO Paulo Rosado.
“The makeup of teams may vary, but what’s important to us is that the process of creation can be done by a multitude of profiles. The back-end developer will be able to create a high-quality user experience. A front-end developer can behave like a startup and validate new apps with the line-of-business executives or field personnel.”
The Intellyx Take
I was already aware of the most fundamental promise of low-code: saving time and money over conventional code-based development and allowing even non-developers to contribute to the functionality and IP of a business with quickly-built apps.
I wasn’t aware of just how far along this space has come – especially when you consider the rise of APIs and easier packaged integrations to just about any other vendor or data sources out there, and the increased levels of automated deployment and performance optimization today’s cloud-native world can offer.
The technical barriers are gone, and companies are already collaborating with customers in new ways. Somewhere between the big-bang implementations of yore, and the Wild West of loosely-coupled services in the cloud, there is a real movement brewing for enterprise-grade low-code development.
©2019, Intellyx, LLC. As of the time of writing, Outsystems and AgilePoint are Intellyx customers. Microsoft is a former Intellyx customer. None of the other companies mentioned in this article are Intellyx customers. Images: Affen Ajife, Brain15, Brain37; flickr.
