The rising popularity of low-code platforms has no definite end in sight. With a quickly evolving competitor landscape and ever-changing customer preferences, there’s immense pressure for businesses to innovate and speed up digital transformation.
More organizations are adopting low code to empower employees and create functional applications with minimal coding. Low-code tools have diverse benefits, but far too many companies expect a miracle.
Also, businesses rush into implementing low code because everyone in their industry is doing so. They don’t consider how low code can work for them in the long term. Without strategic management, your efforts will bear mixed results or result in outright failure.
Is your enterprise low-code platform unable to meet your expectations? Where are you going wrong? How can you ensure your low-code Initiatives don’t fail? Keep reading to know more.
Why low code adoption is at an all-time high
84% of organizations have adopted low-code or no-code tools for faster speed-to-market, to reduce strain on IT resources, and accelerate digital asset development. Low code helps organizations reduce significant IT project backlogs by bridging the gap between the shortage of developers and the growing demand for applications.
Low code future-proofs companies by democratizing app development and empowering non-IT professionals to build user-friendly apps with little coding knowledge. It helps businesses reduce the burden on IT teams and stop them from getting overwhelmed.
64% of IT professionals are leveraging low-code as their go-to development solution to enhance reusability, and save time by delivering more applications, quicker, and with fewer resources. Faster development time lowers costs and increases business competitiveness.
Low-code apps are created from standardized components, which makes them more sustainable and lowers maintenance effort. Organizations can discover digital trends and remain updated with technological advances.
5 problems that occur when implementing a low-code platform and how to solve them
1. No data oversight
Data is an important aspect of any business; it helps businesses highlight their current state, understand customer preferences, and make informed decisions. But, data security is now a vital concern, with organizations wondering if low-code platforms can keep their data safe.
Lack of data oversight can compromise sensitive and critical customer data, and some platforms carry intrinsic risks in how they store and partition customer data. Not all low-code platforms have fine-grained controls to help businesses restrict the type of data being shared or how often it’s used.
Solution:
Before selecting a low code platform, think about data management and what configurations, permissions, and access controls are available. Where possible, get security and compliance certifications, conduct third-party security audits, review service level agreements, and cybersecurity insurance.
2. Giving low-code tools to the wrong people
Low-code tools can help non-IT people build applications easily, but they’re not meant for everyone and cannot build all kinds of apps. Allowing anyone to build applications can cause total anarchy and ultimately non-compliant apps, with security issues. Without proper governance, you may compromise enterprise development standards and app security.
Without a governance framework, you lack the requirements for secure business applications. It’s hard to tell who’s using these tools, what for, where, when, how they’re using them, and which outcome to expect.
Solution:
To solve real business problems and accelerate digital change, pick innovative users with minimal coding expertise and an aptitude for technology. Ensure they’re creative, have a thorough understanding of business processes, and are open to learning and implementing new tools.
3. Limited flexibility and customization options
Customization options vary from one low code platform to another. When creating an application, low-code development tools provide diverse ready-made templates and components you can use as-is or configure to meet predefined use cases.
Several vendors provide access to the underlying code, but others limit your customization options, making it difficult to create applications that flawlessly fit your business needs. Some low-code platforms have rigid application templates, limiting what you can build. With unique out-of-the-box app requirements, you resort to complex and costly workarounds.
Solution:
Before adopting any low-code platform, understand what documentation the platform comes with and clearly know the customization limits.
4. Not thinking long-term when building apps
You’re likely to build terrible, provisional applications if you don’t consider business stakeholder needs and only leverage low-code tools to create applications quickly. You may also have poorly designed, insecure, and non-compliant apps.
A major challenge for low code tools is also that organizations may not have visibility on what their citizen developers are building. Users may cut corners and think they can solve issues during testing, yet don’t test the application, causing serious application problems.
Solution:
Treat low-code app development like real, IT development projects. Apply agile principles and use low code tools to iterate more often, ensuring apps meet stakeholders’ changing needs. Train and support business users to test and validate apps before making updates to avoid damaging live data or disrupting user activity.
5. Vendor lock-in and auditing
A serious fear surrounding low-code platforms is vendor lock-in, but this varies from vendor to vendor. Some vendors typically lock you into their platform in diverse ways. They generate complicated code impossible to maintain outside their platform.
What’s worse, they won’t allow you to edit applications once you stop using the tool. It may also be difficult to identify the code and security controls these low-code vendors set.
Solution:
Before licensing a tool, understand the vendor’s policies and their generated code. Select transparent tools offering open code and frameworks. From this, you can develop clean, standard code to use and maintain both within the platform, and outside.
Fail-proof your low-code Initiatives
Low code’s major benefit is the speed and ease with which you can create applications. But to appreciate these advantages and embrace low code for the long haul, make a conscious choice and choose tools carefully. Understand how they work, select specific low-code projects, and develop a realistic strategy.
