Fast and safe - how to utilize the potential of low-code developments while managing security concerns
Nowadays a lot of companies struggle to enable their full business potential that could be utilized through new technologies. This is often because companies fail to look beyond what their IT departments can deliver when thinking about digitalizing the business and its users. Sometimes misunderstood business demands, and limited IT resources lead to long waiting periods and stress the relationship between business and IT. In addition, the relationship is at risk when the IT defines governance restrictions that constrains application and data usage and thereby limits the business in their possibilities.
Technology is moving forward rapidly and creates great innovative opportunities. But how do businesses find a way to keep up with the high pace of innovation limited by IT capacities and governance restrictions?
Let’s try a short thought experiment. What would happen if the IT created and orchestrated a platform, which would enable the business to create their own automation & digitalization solutions? Well, the solutions would probably match all the requirements and would be developed much faster. Moreover, platform orchestration by the IT would ensure that the development environment is controlled, safe and compliant to all governance requirements.
Wouldn’t that be a relief for all parties involved? Yes. Business users could create their own optimizations that fulfill their requirements without long waiting times and the IT could retrieve capacities to focus on maintaining and optimizing their large-scale enterprise solutions and infrastructure management rather than solving small scale business problems. And this is most definitely why we have recently seen a spike of interest in low-code development platforms like the Microsoft Power Platform, as these have the potential to realize the thought experiment explained above.
Low-code platforms can initiate a culture of Citizen Development, where business staff, then called “citizen developers”, can create their own local developments, e.g. mobile applications, RPA automations or AI chat bots, within a few hours or days.
Create a safe, but lean playing field for low code empowerment
But as the interest of companies increases in enabling the business to develop own solutions independently, so do the concerns regarding governance, security, and compliance. Therefore, we have defined two guardrails that need to be considered when thinking about implementing a low-code platform - moving fast and developing safely. Forrester agrees and states that low-code platforms on the one hand have proven to fulfill the ever growing demand for faster software development, but on the other hand opens up needed discussions on democratizing development and its security.*
Moving fast
- Empower the business and leverage their domain knowledge
- Increase innovation power through easy & low-cost prototyping
- Speed up software development and time to market
- Free up valuable IT capacity to focus on business critical and highly complex solutions
Developing safe
- Creation of different working modes based on governance criteria
- Evaluate associated risk and technical complexity of each solution
- Easy, fast but safe registration of applications and usage of data
- Centralized platform operation is crucial to ensure compliant administration and usage of low-code platforms
Both guardrails help us to answer our initial question: “How do businesses find a way to keep up the high pace of innovation limited by IT capacities and governance restrictions?” Create a safe, but lean playing field for establishing a low code platform that fosters the empowerment of citizen development and digitization across your organization.
If you want to read more about Citizen Development and the involvement of low-code platforms, please see a familiar article from my colleague Veronique Peters:
Citizen-led Development: Democratizing Digitalization with Low Code Platforms
Director, Customer Success Management at ServiceNow
3 年Great article Micha!
PwC | Part-time Partner I DrivingTechnology enabled Finance Transformation I People centric
3 年Michael Koepp , Thanks for sharing. Moving fast while developing safe is a great achievement all organizations should strive for.
Thank you for sharing––totally agree, it's important to have security in mind.
Partner bei PwC Deutschland | Master in Economics
3 年Well placed. All companies have to balance their ambition to innovate and to stay (process) compliant at the same time.