What is Low-Code?

What is a definition of low-code? Low-code is a software development methodology that allows organizations to build applications with a visual interface. It is much faster than traditional development because it reduces the need to write code. 

Developers can draw from a library of reusable components that address the business requirements, which can then be used as building blocks to customize and develop new applications. 

We’ll cover the benefits of low-code over traditional development, but what makes them so different? And then, what about the term “no-code” or “zero-code”—are those the same as low-code? Understand the differences between low-code vs no-code.

The demand for new applications and capabilities is higher than ever, while timelines get shorter and resources get more constrained. These constraints can force your developers to cut corners to meet priorities. 

But what if your business applications were easy-to-build and quick-to-deploy? Sounds simple enough, right? With low-code application development, it is. 

Low-code application development uses visual development tools—such as drag-and-drop functionality and point-and-click interface creation—to enable the rapid creation, deployment, and maintenance of powerful custom apps.

Speedy app development helps IT meet deadlines without sacrificing quality. And with the speed and scalability of low-code, you can scale your applications to improve increasingly complex processes that span your entire organization among other benefits.

Low-code empowers both professional and citizen developers to design and build much faster than they would in a high-code environment. 

Because low-code assumes no coding experience, it’s easy for technical business users to learn how to use a low-code platform. Capabilities like component drag-and-drop, guided process modeling, and user interface templates help users visualize and build business apps.

Many of the most successful low-code developers don’t have formal training in software development. They take up low-code armed with an aptitude for technology and a strong sense of the business’s challenges. And if these people are already working at the company, so much the better—being personally acquainted with the organization’s impediments, they’ll have a head start on addressing them. 

Professional developers benefit from low-code, too. 87% of developers with low-code skills enjoy the work they do with low-code, likely because it is easier, faster, and simpler—and 82% of all developers believe using low-code will increase their earning power. (See more stats in The State of Low-Code for Developers Report.)

These are some typical features you might expect to find in a low-code development platform. 

• Visual, drag-and-drop interface for workflow design. Low-code’s drag-and-drop process modeling lets you visually represent a process. You can integrate complex business rules, data, integrations to systems, AI, automation tools like robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent document processing (IDP), and human workers. 

• Prebuilt, reusable components. Low-code’s ready-to-use components form the basis of your custom application, and they can be reused across the business.

• AI-aided development. Low-code solutions get even faster when paired with AI, helping developers work even faster.  

• Automation capabilities. Low-code should offer a wide variety of automations to power your workflows, like RPA and IDP, as well as ways to automate with AI.

• Enterprise data. A low-code application development platform should provide a way to manage enterprise data so that data can be used and incorporated without expensive data projects or extensive programming. 

• Productivity and collaboration tools. Collaboration features including document comparison, shared packages linking, and group security help development teams work better together.

• Mobile deployment. Expect a low-code platform to have cross-platform functionality standard in its design. No separate development, maintenance, or upgrades should be required to deploy your custom apps on mobile. 

• Security. Enterprise-grade low-code platforms come with built-in security, which means the applications running on them inherit that same level of security. Even the individual components of a low-code application, which can be reused in any number of other apps, are governed by the same security features.

This example shows low-code freeing up employees from repetitive tasks: a company’s payroll process. This business used a legacy system to handle the payroll process, which required a lot of employee time and effort to track and review. 

With low-code, they created a state-of-the-art system that is much more efficient and effective. Employees now clock in and out of their job using the low-code custom application. The app keeps track of hours worked for that pay period, then calculates each employee’s total paycheck based on their hourly rate. When a pay period is complete, the low-code application automatically sends all employee pay information for that pay period to the financial department for review, then, once approved, the app triggers paychecks to go out to employees.

Getting new enterprise applications set up quickly can be a difficult puzzle for enterprises to  solve due to these common app development challenges. Learn what they are and how you can combat them with a modern low-code approach.

Traditional application development teams are large, specialized, and full of intricate inter- and intra-dependencies. Low-code teams, on the other hand, are designed to be nimble, collaborative, and egalitarian. Everyone on the team develops features. And every developer should have at least one additional specialty area—UX design, testing, architecture, etc.

Traditional development approaches rely on business analysts who act as translators between business users and technology teams. The two domains are siloed from each other, which means the people experiencing the problem are separated from the professional developers who are most equipped to solve it. Instead of programmers with a decade of Java experience, low-code teams look for developers who are more interested in solving problems with rapid application development than writing lines of code.

With traditional development practices, feedback loops are like a ferry traveling between two shores. Business users are on one side, and the developers building the application are on the other. Low-code builds a bridge between developers and business users. It makes collaboration easy and encourages clear and frequent input. This helps the end users test assumptions along the way, validating and influencing the application as it takes shape before their eyes.

Deployment is a meaningful milestone. But if your application isn’t used or if the user experience is poor, it will never deliver value. To ensure success, continue focusing on your end users throughout the development life cycle. Identify a few key stakeholders who are well respected among the user group and involve them as often and as early as possible to continue to build goodwill. 

Low-code helps you build applications fast and right the first time. Adopting a few agile best practices can transform long timelines and “just okay” applications into rapid development that delivers outsized results.

In the end, what is low-code? It’s a rapid development style that can be a game-changer for process improvement. Using low-code development, businesses can quickly build—sometimes in just a few weeks—enterprise-grade applications that would once have taken months. By speeding development time and decreasing technical debt, low-code reduces IT backlog and gives developers more time to innovate. With the right low-code platform, it’s easier to integrate, update, and modify enterprise applications, so organizations can adapt and evolve faster in a world of immediacy.