Why Low-Code Platforms Are Exploding in Popularity

Every business is becoming a software business, making digital transformation a critical initiative for maintaining a competitive advantage. Although the need for modern software is affecting every industry, there’s a finite supply of developers who have the skills necessary to program applications from scratch.

To overcome this shortage of tech skills, more companies are adopting low-code/no-code platforms as it greatly reduces the barrier to entry in application development.

Recently, the use of low code has exploded, attributed in part to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as to the increasing pressure on IT to not only deliver value to businesses but also to their end users. In fact, the use of low-code and no-code technologies will nearly triple by 2025, up from less than 25% in 2020, according to Gartner Inc.

Gartner notes that the increase in low-code application platforms is responsible for the increase in citizen developers, particularly business technologists who are not part of their companies' IT departments but develop technology or analytics capabilities for business uses inside and outside their organizations.

Benefits of Low-Code Technology

Increasingly, one of the biggest business challenges for organizations is hiring developers with the right skills. And this developer shortage has resulted in an increase in software developer salaries — the median computer programmer salary in the United States is more than $100,000 annually, in some states that's twice the average regional salary. That makes it even more difficult for companies to hire software developers.

One of the benefits of low-code technology is that is enables companies to deal with this shortage of developer skills by allowing business professionals as well as IT to create applications with fewer developers or without any developers at all. Consequently, it's much easier for organizations to develop custom software using low-code platforms.

Low-code technology also offers other benefits, including:

Breaks down silos in organizations

A number of DevOps initiatives don't meet expectations, in part because teams are having problems working with data silos across IT and the business. Silos can hinder these DevOps efforts because it's not easy to connect disparate systems, resulting in unreliable and error-prone integrations. 

In addition, not having visibility across technology stacks makes troubleshooting more difficult and costly. However, low-code technology can break down the silos between business and IT by building a bridge between existing solutions that aren’t designed to integrate with each other, giving DevOps teams a unified view of the data.

Enables citizen developers

The increase in enterprises' digital transformation initiatives is putting pressure on IT to deliver new business applications more quickly. And the increased need for custom software to support these digital transformation efforts has led to the advent of citizen developers. These are people with little or no formal coding experience that can use low-code tools to build business apps to facilitate their companies' processes.

Enables business technologists

As noted, business technologists are those employees, who don’t work in their organizations’ IT units but develop technology or analytics capabilities for business uses inside and outside their companies, according to Gartner, which adds that 41% of employees say they are business technologists. And companies that enable business technologists successfully are 2.6 times more likely to fast-track their digital transformation initiatives than those that don't enable business technologists, Gartner noted.

Low-code development tools do this by employing visual interfaces rather than programming to build applications, enabling business experts with little coding experience to develop applications.

Faster development cycles and faster innovation

In today’s digital world, low-code development makes it easier for organizations to build modern business apps, in part because they can rapidly adapt and respond to fast-changing business requirements.

With low-code development, organizations can more quickly build apps since what once took months can now be done in days, hours, and even minutes. As such, using low-code development means time isn't a barrier to real innovation any longer. Additionally, low-code development platforms also speed development by decreasing the need for technical resources and skills.

As noted, since the low-code development doesn't depend on highly specialized programming languages, non-technical users without extensive coding training can use visual point-and-click tools to build lightweight applications. 

Low-code development enables faster development cycles and faster innovation by

• Allowing feedback at earlier stages of the development cycle: This feedback can enable creativity while there's still time to make changes. 
• Encouraging communication with end users: By allowing developers and users to share ideas, developers can understand exactly what users want out of the software.
• Opening development opportunities to a wider range of talent: Doing this accelerates delivery dates in the long term because responsibilities aren't just restricted to one group of individuals. 

Lower cost

Low-code development platforms also help organizations save money by helping to reduce recruitment costs. Recruiting, hiring, and retaining developers is a huge issue for companies. Low-code development tools, however, allow non-technical employees to develop applications. In addition, giving developers access to low-code tools can help simplify their jobs, freeing them from manual and repetitive tasks that slow the pace of development and allowing them to focus on more value-added tasks.

Why Functionize Is the Perfect Low Code Test Automation Platform for Organizations

Functionize democratizes testing and allows people of all skill sets, including business testers, to participate in building automation. Since low-code testing tools provide intuitive interfaces, users don't have to write scripts or code to run tests. Low-cost test automation follows in the vein of low-code development tools that allow developers to build apps more efficiently so they can spend less time on repetitive activities and more time on value-added work. 

With Functionize, developers can still contribute to building tests using extensions and custom JavaScript overrides. And since Functionize is fully cloud-based, more people can access and see the results, increasing the visibility of tests and making results easier to interpret with screenshots. This is unlike scripted open source automation tools that require individuals to have coding knowledge so they can understand why something failed or what needs to be fixed.

The bottom line: with a low-code test automation solution, such as Functionize, organizations can create automated tests without the need for code as well as transition their manual tests to automated ones fairly quickly.