Low-Code Application Development

Low-code?development is an approach for increasing?application developer productivity and reducing development times.?Low-code development tools?also?enable democratized and self-service application development for businesses.

These?potential?benefits?have led to a boom in low-code tooling and platforms. However, these platforms must be managed and used for the correct use cases to maximize utilization and minimize subscription costs.

Choosing a platform requires IT leaders?to understand their application requirements against low-code technology components.?The low-code approach?reduces skill sets for development and related requirements across various application development technologies?through higher-code abstraction levels, visual metaphors, and guided developer tools.

As low-code application development continues gaining traction, IT leaders must decide if this approach suits their organization. A list of decision criteria across some role-based focus areas?serves as a framework to guide discussions with business and IT stakeholders.

The Complexity of Requirements for User Interface and User Experience

Many organizations invest much effort into their user experience (UX) and interface (UI) to increase?customer engagement and differentiate themselves in the competitive?environment. These efforts often introduce significant complexity to the implementation that may require traditional coding approaches. Low-code development may not be able to support UI features that are complex and expensive to implement.

The flexibility of Infrastructure and Operations

Low-code application development platforms (LACAPs) rely on the latest IaaS and PaaS products from public cloud providers or the most up-to-date operating systems and platforms (in the case of self-managed?on-premises?deployments). When evaluating low-code development, IT leaders should ensure that their organization is prepared to either:

★ Delegate I&O activities to the low-code platform maintainers.

★ Maintain I&O processes according to the low-code platform provider’s standards.

The complexity of Data Manipulation

Low-code differs from traditional coding in terms of:

★ How costs are allocated for sophisticated business logic.

★ How complex data structures are manipulated.

Application Architecture and Information Security Governance

Like the?I&O?concerns, organizations must adjust how they govern application architecture, IT security, and IT standards to accommodate low-code development. This is especially critical for public cloud-hosted enterprise LCAPs, including the platform vendor’s governance policies, application architecture standards, IT security controls, and certifications.

Some Findings

★ The low-code paradigm applies to many automation and application?capabilities, which can cause IT?leaders problems in identifying the specific technologies and automation types they need.

★ Procurement decisions for low-code development technologies?can?result in multiple expensive platform subscriptions, technical debt, and inefficient platform use leading to early and disruptive platform replacement cycles.

Recommendations

As an?IT leader looking to evaluate and select a low-code application development technology, you should identify the specific low-code technologies that support your productivity and time-to-market needs by analyzing the application, automation, integration, and workflow requirements. The various types of low-code development tools provide different levels of support for the different capabilities.

From Gartner's articles "Assess When to Use Low-Code Application Development Versus Traditional Coding" and "Identify and Evaluate Your Low-Code Development Technologies"