Bankim Chandra is Director & CEO of Dotsquares. Always committed to innovative solutions and mentoring the next generation in the industry.
Since the dawn of application development, there have been two routes to solving a business issue through technology. You can either take an off-the-shelf application from an external vendor or you can hire coders and skilled developers to build a custom application from scratch using the foremost technologies available. The former approach probably won’t fit your organizational needs and requires some level of customization while the latter approach is cost- and time-intensive. Both approaches will probably leave some stakeholders unhappy.
So, is there an alternative approach?
There is—low-code and no-code development. This approach has been gestating since the early days of computing. There are several important steps in its growth, including the rise of rapid application development (RAD), the onset of Visual Basic, the ubiquitousness of spreadsheets and, as we headed into the new century, advances in custom database management and the emergence of customer-focused organizations such as Salesforce. Indeed the first usage of the term “low-code” can be attributed to the research and advisory organization Forrester in 2014.
Essentially, as the name suggests, low-code and no-code development is the use of visual tools (normally drag and drop) that allow the building of applications without the need for specialist coding knowledge. By using these graphical interface tools and simply including each of the respective building blocks, a user can rely on the code in the background to connect all the blocks together to provide a basic application. The complex code behind these blocks abstracts the code to allow non-technical users to build the application.
As the names suggest, there are subtle differences in low-code and no-code tools. The low-code approach alludes to the ability to add custom code to the application to improve and enhance it—a feature that no-code tools inherently lack. But before we discuss any drawbacks with this development approach, let’s assess the benefits.
There are several compelling use cases for the low-code and no-code approaches. Rapid application development is one benefit, allowing accelerated processes to meet fast-changing business requirements. They can be used as a low-cost and low-risk way to present a prototype or proof of concept for a particular business problem. These approaches also lend themselves to workflow automation tasks, especially those of an iterative nature. They also have the advantage of being highly scalable, especially for customer-facing needs. Finally, they can provide a wealth of associated data through dashboards and other data aggregators.
Drawbacks include the obvious limiting factor of customization. By their nature, low-code and no-code tools don’t allow much customization to be applied. Low-code tools have some capabilities but they’re limited in functionality. The rigid templates used for development don’t have the flexibility to handle wholesale alterations to the core code.
The rise in low-code and no-code development can be somewhat attributed to the boom caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. In fact, Gartner researchers estimate that the low-code platform market will reach $16.5 million by 2027, with a CAGR of 16.3% between 2022 and 2027.
Surely, the digital transformation industry must be looking at these developments in earnest. With the rate of success in digital transformation hovering at around 30%, these approaches can be used to increase that percentage.
Another element in the mix is the apparent lack of technical talent globally, which the IT industry is struggling with. This talent shortage increases costs for a custom build, giving even greater exposure to the low-code and no-code approaches from a pure cost perspective. And by allowing the “democratization” of development—opening it up to those less technical—the hope is that those with a more business-oriented mindset can ensure that what’s being built is as close to the organization’s business needs as possible.
Low-code and no-code tools can provide quick, low-cost solutions. They can be very useful for expanding upon a minimum viable product (MVP) and offering a low-cost feasibility study for a particular concept. Can they be used as a competent solution for enterprise applications? Yes, but only up to a limit. The moment the requirements change, the usability of a low-code or no-code tool changes accordingly.
As the technical talent pool gets ever smaller, these approaches are a viable solution for enterprises, especially small and medium-sized businesses. There are limited applications now, but the technology is growing rapidly. As artificial intelligence and machine learning are implemented, allowing ever easier operation, I expect that these approaches will become a panacea for many.
Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
