EMERGENT 10 CHANNELVISION | JULY - AUGUST 2023 Additionally, the notion that citizen developers dominate the landscape (even the low-code landscape) just isn’t accurate. The survey revealed that it’s professional developers who are the main users of low-code tools. Ultimately, effective application building requires collaboration among users, stakeholders and developers. By involving all parties in the design process, reducing ambiguity and utilizing technology that handles deployment details at the platform level, organizations can enhance application development outcomes. The organizations achieving success with low-code investments understand this. That need to collaborate can’t be stressed enough. More than 80 percent of CIOs highlighted the need to increase the pace of development, and more than half of them struggle with the risks associated with managing a large array of applications. Since IT lacks bandwidth and non-IT users lack expertise, getting past this app gap requires them working together and sharing responsibilities. An additional critical way to address this is for organizations to start viewing applications as mass-produced products rather than individually crafted works. The resulting effort looks more like a factory than an artist’s studio. By implementing a common user interface approach, a unified security model, standardized documentation and training processes, organizations can enhance productivity while effectively managing the growing number of applications. Indeed, the most significant risks and challenges in application development are not during the construction phase itself. Design, including requirements gathering and specifications, still remains a manual and adversarial process between customers, vendors or IT departments – to their detriment. Deployment, which encompasses change management, documentation, training, security and more, is often neglected until the last moment. Although low-code tools that focus on design and deployment exist, they aren’t commonplace. We should explore and promote their adoption to alleviate these challenges. In truth, though, the marketplace of ideas has a limited amount of bandwidth, and some of the attention paid to low-code was being diverted to robotic process automation (RPA). While RPA has become more prevalent, it is still not as commonplace as low-code. What seems to be taking place is that organizations are realizing that RPA is not a panacea and that it works best in conjunction with digital business process management and application integration. Such a shift towards a more holistic approach is a positive development. Finally, a great deal of our collective attention has been shifting to AI-generated coding. It definitely deserves attention, but similar to low-code and RPA, AI is not a magical solution. AI requires a corpus of examples from which to create models it can use to generate useful code. Acquiring a large volume of diverse examples from various companies (companies which may be reluctant to share proprietary information) can pose (and is posing) a significant challenge. But that pales in comparison to the biggest issue: AI lacks the ability to explain its decisions, adapt to changing business conditions, and avoid unexpected consequences. Cleverness without transparency has its limits when application needs are complex and evolving. In the end, low-code won. It’s normal. We should focus on what we do with it. Patterns and practices are how we evolve as an industry; without them, we’ll just keep throwing new tool after new tool, attempting to solve business problems we don’t really understand. Real digital transformation is an organizational change, not a technological one, and in this very brief inflection point between low-code hype and AI hype, it’s my hope that we can spend at least a little bit of time on organizations and solutions. I’ll keep my fingers crossed. o Mike Fitzmaurice is vice president of North America and chief evangelist at WEBCON. Who builds applications in your organization? Source: Vanson Bourne, WEBCON How closely do the following describe your organization’s delivery strategy for new applications? Source: Vanson Bourne, WEBCON Has your organization increased, or does it plan to increase, its use of the internet as a primary option for connecting sites to your WAN? Source: Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Which of the following technology categories has your organization already invested in? IT/Professional developers within IT External consultant/VAR/ system integratar Business users/citizen developers 72% 67% 49% 49% 42% 41% custom low-code 0 50 25 75 IT works in partnership with business users/citizen developers to develop needed applications IT develops applications on its own IT purchases and/or subscribes to ready-made solutions available on the market Business users/citizen developers create their own applications We rely on consultant partners or system integrators to develop our solutions Yes, we have implemented this Yes, we are amid this change Yes, we are planning to do this No 23% 22% 19% 19% 17% 0 5 10 15 20 26.2% 9.6% 1.3% 62.9% 82% 64% Cloud Cumputing Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) Who builds applications in your organization? Source: Vanson Bourne, WEBCON How closely do the following describe your organization’s delivery strategy for new applications? Source: Vanson Bourne, WEBCON IT/Professional developers within IT External consultant/VAR/ system integratar Business users/citizen developers 72% 67% 49% 49% 42% 41% custom low-code 0 50 25 75 IT works in partnership with business users/citizen developers to develop needed applications IT develops applications on its own IT purchases and/or subscribes to ready-made solutions available on the market Business users/citizen developers create their own applications We rely on consultant partners or system integrators to develop our solutions 23% 22% 19% 19% 17% 0 5 10 15 20
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