The low-code and no-code market – encouraging the rise of citizen developers, as well as the acceleration of software development – is now large and will double in size over the next five years. Recent research from ISG values the market at around $25 billion at present, and this sector is expected to grow at a compound growth rate of 28% per year, reaching $45.5 billion by 2027 .how can we put a stop to this growth? Can there really be an unfettered “citizen developer” class, or is this just pious marketing?
Proponents of low-code and no-code point out that the advantages of low-code and no-code more than compensate for the problems that arise. For starters, the approach can speed up software development by 10 times, says Anindeep Kar, principal consultant at ISG. Moreover, by the end of next year, half of medium and large enterprises will have adopted low-code “as one of their strategic platforms”.
Also: The future of the web will need a different kind of software developer
The appeal of low-code and no-code is that it’s a “force multiplier” that can help address issues that get in the way of business and technology aligning, Kar says. A lack of alignment “has always been a major contributor to failed digital transformations,” he says. “By blurring the line between citizen developers and professional developers, low-code and no-code are doing to application development what site reliability engineering did to IT infrastructure management. Low-code and no-code help offset chronic resource shortages, speed and accelerate the development of low-complexity intelligent automations or business process workflows.”
Low-code and no-code are increasingly present in digital enterprises that support hybrid and remote workplaces. “No-code supports the ‘cloud-forward’ approach, enabling faster and more convenient cloud migrations,” said Borya Shakhnovich, CEO and co-founder of airSlate.
The growing presence of low-code also implies changes in the roles of IT and business professions. These platforms “give professional developers the ability to act as consultants,” adds Kar. Additionally, companies that are successfully using technology “to increase profitability have used a collaborative mix of citizen and professional developers to accelerate time to value without compromising centralized governance,” Kar says. Additionally, professional developers and IT staff received “access to faster development tools and the ability to focus more on architecture and strategy and practice business skills.”
Also: Low-code and no-code improve the work of developers in two ways
The main concern with low-code and no-code is its potential to exacerbate the spread of shadow IT. Applications developed by citizen developers “are often developed without proper IT oversight, so a security breach or non-compliant solution can result in significant financial damage,” Kar warns. Additionally, the extended parallel computing landscape “can exacerbate existing IT technical debt with orphan couplings. This occurs when a parallel application uses data from computing applications without IT being aware of the dependency. Changes to a dependent computer system may disrupt the parallel application, thereby disrupting business operations.”
Shakhnovich agrees that shadow computing is a risk, especially since it is possible for “one or very few users to know how the system works, and a proliferation of governance issues.” It also opens up a new role for IT professionals — “establishing appropriate oversight, so that citizen developers can have the freedom to improve their work,” he says. “While low-code and no-code solutions tend to be both efficient and cost-effective, there are instances where security concerns or the need for complex functionality can limit their effectiveness.”
Another disadvantage of low-code and no-code is the inability to customize solutions. “There is a rigidity of low-code and no-code platforms,” warns Nag Vaidyanathan, chief technology officer at Duck Creek Technologies. “Many aren’t flexible enough to respond to the nuances or uniqueness of a particular business feature.” Additionally, low-code and no-code may require “a level of maintenance based on changing business needs. This includes deviations from the norm due to special circumstances such as integrations , the need to modify inherent out-of-the-box code, replacements, debugging, creation of shadow computing groups, as well as redundancy or duplication of functionality across multiple areas of a business.”
This is where IT needs to step in and take matters into its own hands. IT will need to “create and manage APIs for self-service data,” says Kar. “It’s not a trivial problem. It involves extracting data from departmental silos, establishing rules – and writing APIs that enforce rules – that allow people to access only the data they they are allowed to see, and ensure that the data is used appropriately. Data governance will become a much more important part of IT’s job.”
Also: Low-code software makes employers more attractive
Professional developers and IT staff “won’t have to deal with basic programming of common reusable code,” says Vaidyanathan. “Instead, they can focus on value additions and creating software maturity with build-or-buy decisions, proprietary service-based architecture development. This opens the door for technologists to getting closer to supporting the customer and meeting their needs.”
The bottom line is that “when traditional programming ceases to be a hindrance, people can build software to answer questions as they arise and discard that software when it has served its purpose”, explains Kar. “If you’re a product manager, can you track sales of a product channel by channel? Can you see sales trends across countries, states, or cities? That’s possible with some BI tools, but all too often you would need database access, knowledge of SQL, and the ability to program in a language like Python. of IT, and is a significant burden. I don’t think IT will be able to fully disengage, but when data becomes self-service and people have the tools to analyze it, the intervention computing will be the exception and not the rule.”
#lowcode #nocode #market #continues #grow #means #technology #roles