No developers? No problem. How low-code and no-code can boost your software development and thus, your digital transformation
There’s no escaping the need to digitize in today’s environment. And the need for speed is only increasing. With developer resource in short supply, organizations need alternatives. What if you could build software without having to rely solely on coding skills? Low-code and no-code platforms could be an answer.
As digital technology has become omnipresent in our lives, the requirement for software development has become indispensable across industries. Driven by the digitization of products, processes and sales channels, global spend on IT has been growing for the past two decades, reaching $3.9 trillion in 2021, which sent demand for IT skills soaring. This leads to a fundamental gap in developers, as can for example be seen in the US: While there are about 220k open software development positions, only about 30k graduate with a computer science major per year. The online career platform, Indeed, found that 83% of hiring managers see their digital transformation slowed down by lack of development resources. ?While organizations ramp-up tech hiring and optimize their IT organizations for maximum efficiency, there are other solutions to digitize more with less coding talent. In this article, we explore whether no-/low-code platforms can accelerate companies’ digitization journey and highlight real-life examples.
The challenges of modern software development
1: Capabilities
With changing consumer demand patterns and digital pioneers transforming entire industries, it might well be true that, as the CEO of tech recruiting company Hired said, “every company is a tech company now”. This led to the number of tech jobs increasing by 32% in 2019 alone. Surveys by LinkedIn and Inc. have revealed that the skills most in demand in the labor market are tech related. With demand far outstripping supply, companies have been forced to offer skyrocketing salaries to get the talent they need.
2: Time, resource, and budget constraints
Consumer trends are changing more quickly than ever, meaning time to build is at a premium for anyone who wants to gain a first mover advantage or keep up with the competition. Yet in speaking with our clients, we found that more than 60% of senior managers struggle to secure adequate technology resources to do this. Meanwhile, lack of budget for innovation remains a perennial issue for others. Lastly, the shortage in effective development time is driven by attrition. The CTO of a large CPG client recently told us that they expect a developer to have an onboarding time of approximately 9 months, another 9 months of getting used to architecture, procedures, team and organization, before she really creates value after 1.5 years for the organization. The average tenure for tech talent for this company is 2.5 years – a tight window to generate value for the organization that sets off hiring and training efforts.
3: Cross-functional communication
The various departments involved in developing a new digital solution often have different ideas about what it will look like, or how it should operate. An occurrence that is frequently rooted in vague specifications, or miscommunication between teams. With the brief coming from a part of the business that understands the purpose of the tool, but lacks the technical ability to develop it, some elements are inevitably lost in translation. These communication barriers further slow down the already scarce developer time or even cause it to be wrongly invested entirely.
Introducing low-code and no-code
We see companies’ efforts to digitize frustrated by their reliance on a niche set of scarce skills. But there is another way: the use of low-code or no-code platforms.
As the names imply, low-code and no-code platforms offer an intuitive approach to developing and deploying digital applications, by reducing or removing the need for coding skills. They are based on the “what-you-see-is-what-you-get” (WYSIWYG) format and use intuitive functionality like drag and drop to develop prototypes, applications and complete IT solutions, enabling non-technical teams and individuals to do things that previously would have needed a software developer. Entire business workflow applications can even be built and deployed into existing processes (see Figure 1).
Figure 1: Low-code and no-code platform functionality
Low-code and no-code are not the same thing
While low-code and no-code share some characteristics, and can be used across multiple layers of the tech stack (see Figure 2), it’s important to distinguish between them:
Low-code platforms require users to have low to intermediate level coding skills. They provide a variety of customization options and flexibility, making them more appropriate for relatively mature prototypes and functional applications, such as those that are integrated with external systems and data sources.
No-code platforms, on the other hand, don’t require any coding skills, and work with pre-developed templates. They are ideal for draft prototypes and simple applications focused on front-end features that users interact with directly.
To put it in even plainer terms, a low-code platform can do everything a no-code platform can do and more customization through individual coded fragments.
Figure 2: Low-code and no-code platforms within the tech stack
Kearney evaluated the supplier landscape and found that the platform availability is mature. There are novel challengers, already established like Appian und OutSystems. Additionally, there are divisions of the hyperscalers that build Low-Code capabilities.
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The platforms limitations
Despite their obvious advantages, low-code and no-code are by no means the answer to every software development need. Designed for simplicity, they reach their limits when it comes to complex applications, and so traditional software development will still be required for the foreseeable future. One of the major limitations is the front-end flexibility. From our experience, solutions that are highly focused on providing the ultimate UX (user experience) and need highly customized frontend designs for this, often cannot be executed using No-/Low-Code platforms. Similarly, a limitation arises in highly customized integrations. While Low-Code platforms are excellent in building integrations fast between current and new architecture, they reach their limitations, once enterprise grade APIs with highly specific (potentially older) standards come into play.
Using low-code and no-code to increase agility and transform faster
So how can low-code and no-code platforms help tackle the typical challenges organizations face? Let’s take a look.
1: Capabilities
By enabling software to be built by those who don’t have a background in the discipline, more employees across the business can gain an understanding of what is involved in application development, and what is technically feasible. This creates a basic level of understanding and capability that did not exist before, helping companies start to bridge the gap. As such, less guidance from IT is needed throughout prototyping, MVP (minimum viable product) development and hypothesis testing processes, lowering the workload for technical teams, and speeding up deployment.
2: Time, resource and budget constraints
The rapid prototyping made possible by deploying low-code and no-code also means getting options and results early. New applications can be built from scratch and added to existing technology stacks within a few weeks, while existing solutions can be connected via API integration. In terms of budget, optimizing the in-house setup in this way will cost a fraction of outsourcing the entire process. And if internal software development resource remains an issue, prototypes can now be built internally, before being outsourced for further or final development.
3: Creating the spec
With a better general level of knowledge about technical development and feasibility starting to spread through the organization, employees outside of IT will be able to develop more accurate and realistic specifications for new digital solutions. In addition, with multiple departments working on one unified platform, communication mishaps will reduce, and hand-offs between departments will be much smoother.
Low-code and no-code in action
It could be tempting to assume that low-code and no-code platforms are only for those who are playing catchup in the digital race. But they are also popular among the experts, with a recent Forrester study revealing that one in three developers use them.
There have also been notable developments among leading tech companies, including Google, which acquired AppSheet in 2020 to complement its existing portfolio. Even cloud players like AWS and Azure have started to get in on the action, while large corporates like DELL, Bayer, and Colliers have also successfully introduced the technology to improve the internal development process, reduce development and reporting time, and build new functionality from the ground up, respectively (see Figure 3).
Figure 3: Case studies
Figure 3 highlights how low-code and no-code proved to be a valuable addition to incumbents’ setups, supplementing their own capabilities and allowing new architectures to be built without the need to outsource entire projects.
If you’d like to speed up your software development, without having to pay over the odds, low-code or no-code could be a potential solution. To learn more, and find out how we can help, get in touch with one of our experts.
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