The term “Low-Code” only first appeared in 2014 via John Rymer, Vice President and Chief Analyst at Forrester Research, initially used to describe the type of interactive application development as we know it today. The US analyst firm defines the technology as follows: “Products and/or cloud services for application development that employ visual, declarative techniques instead of programming”[1] The beginnings of Low-Code technology go back to the 1990s. However, until the year the term was defined, its development was not as strong as it has been since: The number of Low-Code providers is estimated to be more than 200 worldwide and new competitors are constantly being added. Forrester Research forecasts a total market for Low-Code platforms of $15.5 billion in 2020.[2] Meanwhile, there is a manufacturer-neutral specialist conference for providers of Low-Code and Low-Code platforms, which is taking place for the second time this year: the Berlin Low-Code Day.
Low-Code has therefore become an integral part of the modern IT landscape and is taking on a central role in the successful implementation of the Digital Transformation. We put together seven, at times provocative, facts that highlight this key role:
Things cannot go on as they are
The Digital Transformation cannot be stopped. Everything that can be digitalized, will be digitalized. The scope of the use of IT solutions will multiply. US-based analyst IDC predicts that 500 million software solutions will be developed in the next five years, more than in the past 40 years combined[3] - despite the decreasing availability of IT specialists and without the IT budget growing many times over at that. US-based analyst Gartner predicts that the demand for software development capacity will grow five times faster than the available capacity. It is impossible to continue in software development as before.
A paradigm shift is coming
Today’s conventional programming methods are far too slow and eat up too many valuable resources. Doing everything from scratch is not necessary for a large part of the required IT solutions and is also no longer sustainable. Gartner predicts that by 2020, at least 50% of all newly developed IT solutions worldwide will be developed using high-productivity tool sets, including Low-Code and No Code platforms.
The two-speed IT will prevail
According to Gartner, a “two-speed IT” will prevail: “Stable IT” for a company’s critical core processes and “Fast IT” for everything else. Stable IT falls within the budget responsibility of the CIO and Fast IT is under the budgetary sovereignty of the CDO and/or the departments, but with the CIO’s infrastructure support. Fast IT is driven directly by the digitalization ideas from the specialist departments, operates in a decentralized fashion and to a large degree in parallel without a comprehensive master plan.
Agile software development is not agile enough
What’s known as agile software development according to Scrum is somewhat more flexible than extremely conservative programming according to the waterfall model, but is ultimately even more complex, more expensive and, overall, even slower. This type of more or less agile software development is more part of Stable IT.
Other players compel the use of other tools
Fast IT is driven by other players with a high level of professional, but less IT-related competence (who are known as citizen developers or business developers) and therefore also needs other tools and platforms. The means of choice for this are Low-Code platforms. They enable the development of tailor-made IT solutions without or almost without programming, and even without the classic identification of requirements and specifications. Low-Code platforms also promise an increase in efficiency by a factor of 10. This is a goal that the leading Low-Code providers are coming remarkably close to. Implementing projects with two instead of ten developers in half the time, and with comparable or even higher quality, is actually already a reality today.
Projects need Design Thinking methods
Low-Code developments with a proper Low-Code team do not require rigid Scrum rules, no trained Scrum masters, and above all no all-knowing product owners. Instead, you need other project management methods based on the principles of Design Thinking, with a different type of project manager, who takes on more of a moderating role rather than an ownership role.
The future of Low-Code has already begun
Low-Code platforms are no longer a dream of the future, but have long since become a part of everyday life. According to Forrester Research, 29% of all companies in the United States already rely on Low-Code development and another 43% plan on using it. Low-Code arrived in Germany a long time ago as well. A current example is the new development of the complete solution for the Federal Fishery IT department: 58 specialist modules, 2 million lines of program code, 99.2% of which were automatically generated with the SCOPELAND Low-Code platform.