The Pitfalls of Low-Code Development and How to Avoid Them

To see the full power of low-code, trade outdated, bloated development approaches for some key agile practices. Read this eBook for four common low-code pitfalls and how to rethink your approach. With this in mind, low code significantly enhances speed-to-market and improves the overall business efficiency when used in tandem with traditional methods. All in all, there is no silver bullet that can turbo-boost your business, so it’s vital to consider multiple options and get professional advice.

So far, there are many signs that this app development approach is delivering on this promise. Companies of all sizes are rapidly developing new applications and setting up their own Low-Code ‘Centers of Excellence’. The development platform market is projected to grow from USD 13.2 billion in 2020 to USD 45.5 billion by 2025 .

Additionally, community-minded developers can share their components with others, build a library of their own components, and control the parameters under which outsiders can see, use, and manipulate them. A robust low-code platform, like Servoy, will remain stable while adapting to changes, updates, overhauls, and resource reduction. The more adaptive and reactive your software becomes to changes on the backend, the quicker you will be able to take advantage of the latest trends and influx of demand. Likewise your business will also benefit in the long run with lower maintenance costs, higher agility, and cheaper upgrade expenses. Furthermore, low-code platform offerings are generally tiered into some form of a good/better/best offering. Solutions with scale, especially within the enterprise, often require the top-tier offering.

Compliance and Security Update Risk

However, many question whether there is a place at the low-code table for ISVs and enterprise teams looking to build and modernize complex applications. To answer that, we have to look at the four key functionality gaps found in low-code development and how to address them. If you ask any IT analyst what the future holds for application development, they’ll likely tell you how low-code is taking the market by storm. Gartner predicts that low-code will account for 65% of all app development by 2024, while a Forrester report reveals that the industry is expected to grow to $21.2 billion by 2022. In today’s rapidly changing IT world, low-code is offering one of the fastest and most agile environments for companies looking to build and innovate new and existing applications. Many low-code applications are written by business users, which means they focus on functionality.

You can create solutions for several platforms in one go and demonstrate investors or stakeholders a fully-functioning MVP within the shortest time possible. There are several leading low-code application platforms on the market, likeMendix low code software,OutSystemsorAppian. Since the JourneyApps app-side architecture runs a fully-fledged database on the device, the responsiveness of the apps remains excellent, low-code Aapp development pitfalls even with large datasets. We typically test against our most sophisticated app component, which is our advanced data tables. We also have an extensible frontend framework implemented in React, so anyone comfortable with React can implement their own UI components. But like everything in business, there are risks and rewards to democratizing IT and giving amateurs the power to create and maintain apps.

SERVICES

Regardless of the type of output generated by the platforms, comprehensive validation is required assuming the same output might be part of the regular project deliverables in a production environment. With the greatest benefits of Low-Code — its reuse of best practice components, its ease and its speed — some risks come along. When not appropriately applied, the approach could lead to poor user experience, low-quality products or below-par performance. Most Low-Code platforms provide a data — logic — interface setup out-of-the-box, which makes it ideal to build a full user story as a ‘chunk’ of front-end and back-end components. Businesses should establish a portfolio management process, with standardized approaches to data handling and documentation. Proper documentation helps to mitigate knowledge transfer risk and ensure that future users can easily find what others have done and build upon it.

This leaves the customer with functional gaps, and a long list of feature requests that the vendor may or may not eventually implement. Quickbase, and deploy those applications across departments using best practices to mitigate risk. Gartner’s Strategic Planning Assumptions suggested that by 2020, more than 70 percent of enterprises would have strong citizen development policies in place. Libraries are like languages; there are often phrases and expressions that cannot be translated from one language to another. Limiting applications to one library exchanges unique idiomatic language for maximum clarity and consistency.

Low-Code Automation: How Businesses Can Avoid the Pitfalls

Forrester predicts the LCNC market will grow to around $14 billion by 2024, while Gartner estimates that LC application development will account for 65% of all application development activity by 2024. Key benefits include improved efficiency, faster app development and deployment, ease of use, lower development cost and supplement to core developer activities. There’s no need to learn a new coding language, understand your IT infrastructure or even know what compilation means. This makes the approach very accessible to people without an IT background and no experience in developing software applications. Low-Code is promising to radically change the way organizations develop and manage their IT landscape.

• The issue with this approach is that configuring the component is almost as difficult as creating the UI from scratch.
• However, customization and integration with external systems increase security risks that must be addressed based on the seriousness of the risk.
• But as new technology solutions gain traction, so too does their marketing hype.
• But if you’re running low-code projects with old high-code approaches, you’re barely scratching the surface of its potential.
• WaveMaker’s RAD Platformis designed keeping in mind the requirements of a Software Developer, Citizen developer/business user, IT architect, and CIO.

Low-code circumvents the problem of limited developers by lowering the learning curve and engaging citizen developers who may have little experience in coding. Multiple aspects of system development can be powered by low-code to eliminate redundancy and cost. Through low-code, developers are no longer required to individually code every UI, workflow or procedure of a new application. Systems can be built with less risk of coding, and the most experienced and resourceful developers can focus on more difficult tasks.

Examples here include the Java-eque scripting language Groovy used by Dell Boomi and the totally proprietary language Deluge used by Zoho Creator. — whether they prefer programming in low-code, no-code, or more advanced source code. To get beyond the hype, CIOs and tech leaders need a strategy that bypasses the fluff to reach the market opportunities of low-code. Companies must figure out the right tool or combinations of tools to successfully execute their broader low-code vision, taking the full IT environment into consideration.

How to Use Automated, Agile Processes for Application Modernization

Passing on the responsibility to stay up-to-date to low-code developers is a pretty big ask. Even so, it is the default approach to maintaining smooth integration with third-party services. This article details three major issues that low-code developers need to consider in order to deliver the best possible https://globalcloudteam.com/ user experience. The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes. In the best case scenario, a low-code platform supports a subset of a standard programming language.

First, to make configuring the app simple and painless, low-code platform owners can hide all the configuration complexity from their users. In its place, they can put a setup wizard or other tools that help developers navigate each configuration step. Crowning the list of challenges, and perhaps the most obvious of all, is limited customization.

Visual development just doesn’t cut it for complex use cases

If they connect or integrate their app with other services offered on the web today, they could unwittingly introduce security vulnerabilities that would have been obvious to more seasoned programmers. Also, when an app relies on code that is outsourced and delivered in pre-configured modules, you are dependent on the vendor to stay on top of security vulnerabilities. You might not be able to debug your low-code apps until the vendor provides a fix. As a customer, you’ll likely remain in a state beholden to the vendor for new features.

How to Be a 10x Software Engineer

However, in recent years Low-Code and No-Code platform development has revolutionized application development by making it faster and more efficient. These platforms provide predefined libraries and interfaces with drag-and-drop functionality as part of the visual development environment. The third major issue with low-code app development is distinguishing design-time and real-time. When low-code developers are in the process of building an app, what they see (design-time) is different from what users see when they use the app (real-time). Simply put, apps look different when they’re in the editor and when they’re used in devices.

A typical modern app should interface with anywhere between five and 10 third-party services. Low-code platforms are great for proof of concept projects and small-scale back-office applications. And whether you adopt a low-code platform or not, it’s important to know what you’re in for. While any technology platform can accumulate tech debt, low-code platforms do it faster because they can pump out applications so quickly. Therefore, if your company is keen on the low-code approach, it’s likely that multiple solutions will be needed to cover multiple use cases.

Teams of developers, business analysts and process owners can work together more effectively, generate a more consistent look and feel across applications, and eliminate siloed processes altogether. And if key developers leave the organization, the threat of bottlenecking development is greatly reduced. On one hand, no-code and low-code tools allow business users to use integration templates and assemble code blocks. On the other hand, skilled developers can take advantage of low-code and pro-code tools to focus on the more complicated parts of the solution. Low-code developers often want to use the same UI components, the same screens, and the same logic across different applications. To address this need, app-building platforms use custom components to streamline the user experience.

If that weren’t bad enough, the mobile experience is especially terrible with low-code platforms. Many low-code platforms don’t support mobile applications at all, and the ones that do often pump out a very stripped-down application which attempts to adapt itself to a smaller screen. Some of these mobile applications leverage HTML5, and others a generic platform app offered through Apple and Google app stores. For the latter, one must download the platform app once, then re-use it for different instances of custom solutions your in-house team builds.

When choosing a low-code provider, CIOs should consider past performance, customer base and governance. As the name implies, a “low-code” platform is a solution intended to build and manage software applications with minimal software coding. The basic idea is to point-and-click your way through a graphical design interface to design, deploy, and maintain custom software without the pain of software development. From a business perspective, the benefit is to expedite software development via lower-cost (non-technical) employees. Low-code solutions indeed have in-build security protocols, but they still can’t provide the same security level as standalone development technologies. With an application based on low-code, you have neither full control over data security or access to source code.

The Appian Low-Code Platform combines the key capabilities needed to get work done faster, Process Mining + Workflow + Automation, in a unified low-code platform. For an enterprise, terms like maintenance, security, and support are crucial when they take a decision to invest in a low-code app development platform. As your organization starts to embrace LCNC platforms to automate and deliver applications faster, two critical V&V challenges must be addressed. First, design and implement an agile test strategy that takes into account every aspect of the application. And second, security and performance validation is paramount once the platforms are operational.

(I.e. download the “Acme low-code mobile app” once, then use it for your intranet app, your procurement app, your volunteer sign-up app, etc.) Not the most intuitive or elegant of approaches. Modern applications are required to work on multiple mobile devices, like phones and tablets. For such applications being built on a low-code platform, it does not mean re-building an application to suit the orientation of a phone or tablet. While there may be some apprehension in some corners to implementing low-code app development platforms, it has undoubted benefits for IT groups. Aspects such as lack of customization and difficulty in integration have been addressed by leading platform vendors. While some of these concerns are warranted for some vendors, JourneyApps has taken a unique approach to side-step the frustrations and downsides of other low-code platforms.