How Low-Code Can Supercharge Application Development
Low-code offers a path forward for the business agility enterprises need now. It enables you to respond to digital urgency and changes in business direction.
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Low-Code Development Guide
Low-code is not just about accelerated app development. It’s about creating and managing innovative, business-critical software more efficiently.
Benefits of Low-Code
Low-code is often associated with development speed. But low-code has many more benefits.
1. Increased Agility
Organizations can pivot new solutions to respond to market changes much faster. That’s possible not only because of the speed of development but also because development teams can quickly present a working prototype. From there, they can gather business feedback much faster and adjust accordingly, instead of going back and forth till they get it right.
2. Maximized Productivity
Low-code accelerates software development up to 10 times faster than traditional methods, according to John Rymer of Forrester. This maximizes developer productivity and empowers organizations to do more with the same resources (which is particularly important in a time of high development demand and developer shortage).
Adapting Agile to Build Products with Low-Code: Tips and Tricks
2. Maximized Productivity
Low-code accelerates software development up to 10 times faster than traditional methods, according to John Rymer of Forrester. This maximizes developer productivity and empowers organizations to do more with the same resources (which is particularly important in a time of high development demand and developer shortage).
More advanced, high-performance low-code platforms like OutSystems provide a level of abstraction during the development phase and the full CI/CD cycle, automating all the mundane and tedious tasks that slow developers down and prevent the creativity that leads to innovative apps.
3. Improved Customer Experience
With low-code, organizations can launch new products to the market that meet customer expectations much faster, as well as adapt and change their existing products based on customer feedback and data much more easily.
High-performance low-code platforms like OutSystems also include the capabilities necessary for delivering multiexperiences, allowing organizations to address all the ways customers engage digitally (e.g., touch, voice, and gesture).
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4. Increased Collaboration Between Business and IT
The visual programming approach of low-code empowers business and other stakeholders to be a part of the development process. The result is whole-team collaboration that enables organizations to capitalize successfully on developer knowledge and business expertise. By pulling experts from business and IT to collaborate on cross-functional projects that deliver new applications, organizations can maximize the diverse knowledge and skills they possess.
Capabilities App Dev Platforms Need for Whole-Team Cross-Functional Collaboration
5. Quick and Easy Change and Maintenance Processes
Because dev teams don’t have to write every single line of code, adapting and changing applications due to competition, economics, disruption, or the emergence of new opportunities is a fairly quick and easy process.
6. Lower Barrier to Entry
Inexperienced developers can quickly build their first app and understand step-by-step what they are doing. They see almost immediately how they can bring value. As a result, their ramp-up is much smoother, and they can quickly contribute to a high-performing team.
7. Faster Innovation
Low-code delivers speed and simplicity so junior developers and tech enthusiasts without a strong development background can build apps as if they were full-stack developers. Just as importantly, it enables skilled developers to focus on more creative, less mundane aspects of programming. As a result, companies of any size can maximize their existing resources and deliver the solutions their business requires to stay competitive.
Low-Code vs. Traditional Development
Note that not all low-code platforms have the same capabilities. In this table, we’re evaluating the low-code advantage based on the capabilities provided by a high-performance low-code platform like OutSystems.
| Software Dev Areas | Traditional Development | Low-Code Development |
|---|---|---|
|
Dev Automation (CI/CD) |
Need to orchestrate separate tools and coding handovers between them. |
SDLC workflow automation is built-in to the platform - 1 click deploy. |
|
User Experience (DesignOps) |
Designers and front-end engineers use separate tools and dev cycles, delaying a critical creation phase. Total freedom to adapt interface. |
Both designers and front-end engineers collaborate in real time, reusing assets and tools; WYSIWYG changes. |
|
Development Productivity |
Slow due to heavy lifting; developers waste much of their time in low-value coding like UI, extra security hardening, or test automation. |
High-performance software delivery due to abstraction, automation, repos, and AI inside the platform. |
|
Process automation |
Typically handled in some BPM tools, but lacking in flawless UX or deep data sources integration. |
Provide built-in BPM features and enable consistent changes to UX and integration. |
|
Catalogs of APIs and web services |
Growing number of web services at a rapid pace. Plus, vendor APIs vary significantly, which means there are many considerations for the developers tasked with using them. |
APIs are encapsulated in a function that can be reused in any app with security and governance best-practices built-in, meaning you don’t have to reinvent it across teams. |
|
Security |
RThe risk of human error is high; the person building the app is responsible for ensuring the app follows security best practices. |
Security is embedded in the app generation process; for OutSystems, source code may be scanned unlike interpreted/SaaS+ platforms. |
|
Talent Pool Size |
Many developers but few are available with the skills that organizations need, representing < 1% of a typical company. |
Expands talent globally as it is easier to learn, and companies are able to convert non-engineers into digital creators. Talent pool can grow to 30% of the organization without a corresponding rise in cost. |
|
TCO |
Very high because the cost of changes in the long run is prohibitive. |
Change is cheap with automation, modular reusability, app templates, and AI. |
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