Low-Code Platforms Turn 'Shadow IT' into Business/IT Collaboration

As a long-time CIO, nothing worries me more than ‘Shadow IT’: business unit folks (‘power users’) who craft IT solutions to their individual problems—often using inappropriate ‘desktop tools’ like Excel & Access—rather than engaging IT to use industrial-strength tools and overarching security architecture to build higher-performance solutions.

The business sees things differently: How do we get our job done when a big bureaucratic IT department doesn’t prioritize OUR needs and takes too long to solve simple yet pressing problems?

Until recently, there wasn’t a good solution to the ‘quick but risky’ vs. ‘high-quality + high cost/time’ dilemma. An emerging class of low-code platforms turns the battle between Corporate IT and Shadow IT into a high-performing partnership between ‘Citizen Developers’ in the business and ‘Pro Developers’ in IT.

These platforms allow the groups to collaborate to meet IT’s needs for security & maintainability while empowering business users to quickly craft the solutions they need to get their jobs done. What makes low-code platforms different from desktop tools, and how do they bridge the historical gap between IT and business power users?

• Low-code platforms, unlike desktop tools, are integrated toolsets for designing, creating, deploying, and maintaining applications that solve complex, often multi-step and multi-user, business process problems. Integration makes Citizen Developers more productive while allowing IT to set security and data standards that protect the organization.
• Desktop tools were never designed to operate high-performance multi-user applications and tend to fail—sometimes catastrophically—when under stress. Low-code platforms are built to securely and reliably scale, which allows a terrific departmental solution to find widespread use with minimal tweaking by IT.
• Low-code platforms, like desktop tools, are easy to start using without a technical background—so a business user with a problem can quickly create a simple solution with minimal help. What often happens with desktop tools is that as the solution complexity grows, they ‘run out of gas’: a function that’s needed just isn’t available. Unlike desktop tools, low-code platforms offer layers of ever-more-powerful capabilities when Citizen Developers need them—and allow a Professional Developer in IT to turn a simple application built by a Citizen Developer into an enterprise-scale application.
• This ‘power continuum’ from novice business user through Citizen Developer to Pro Developer adds a powerful collaboration capability to low-code platforms: ‘platform-based prototyping.’ Without a low-code platform, users communicate their process needs to Pro Developers using drawing tools, stand-alone business process modeling tools, or even doodles on a whiteboard. The IT pro must then recreate the user’s drawings using some IT tool and code the solution using other IT tools. Three or more tools to solve a problem impedes rapid development! Using a low-code platform, a business user diagrams their needs using integrated modeling tools. The platform then generates a prototype application for evaluation or even for production use! If IT is later brought in to help, the generated app and associated diagrams/designs are right there for IT to review and to enhance—without the wasted time and confusion of re-creating the business user’s work. This seamless collaboration demonstrates the potential of a low-code platform to leverage both business expertise and IT skills to create a solution that meets business needs and allows for long-term IT support.

As an IT decision-maker, picking an integrated low-code platform that combines business modeling, application building, and an execution environment allows your organization to get the best of both worlds: Citizen Developers with lots of business experience and less IT expertise partnered with IT Pro Developers with tool expertise who know less about the business.

This is a paid post brought to you by IDG and Bizagi. The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Bizagi.