Summary : The LCDP (Low-Code Development Platform) market is large and increasing rapidly. Forrester predicts that the low-code development platform market will increase significantly from $3.8 billion in 2017 to $21.2 billion by 2022. Gartner estimates that by 2024, 65% of application development will involve some form of low code application development.

Low Code Is Popular

The LCDP (Low-Code Development Platform) market is large and increasing rapidly. Forrester predicts that the low-code development platform market will increase significantly from $3.8 billion in 2017 to $21.2 billion by 2022. Gartner estimates that by 2024, 65% of application development will involve some form of low code application development.

Source：Low Code

Four Features of Driving Low Code Popularity

Low Code Has a Pre-Built Module

The low-code platform allows developers to build applications effortlessly and seamlessly through the pre-built modules library. These modules are also reconfigurable and can be updated as operations require. Enterprise low-code platforms usually allow developers to create their custom modules and share them in the enterprise as reusable company assets.

Low Code Shortens Development Time

Low code = less code leads to faster development time. Developers can improve work efficiency by using low-code development platform. However, this does not necessarily mean that the low-code developers will be put into more development projects. On the contrary, it also provides an option that allows spending more time collecting requirements, collaborating with stakeholders, iterating end-users acceptance testing, and ultimately delivering a product that is more acceptable and loved by end-users.

Low Code Allows Smooth Collaboration

Business users and developers look upon a project from different perspectives, but they both contribute value, and cooperation between the two should be encouraged. The low-code development platform can promote collaboration between developers and business users by providing visual design tools that business users can explain and understand.

For example, you can use a design tool like a flowchart to design a business process. From the perspective of business users, a flowchart represents the logical flow of high-level functions performed by an individual or system. From the developer's point of view, each node in the workflow may represent an event that will trigger a service containing some logical form before transitioning the workflow to the next step. The same design tools enable business users to understand whether the design meets the needs of the business process and the needs of developers as the development environment that executes the workflow itself.

Low Code Can Run Both in the Cloud and Locally

Many low-code development platforms operate as SaaS-based solutions in the cloud. Cloud-based solutions can be established quickly and require little maintenance. However, many companies prefer or may even specify an internal option so that they can deploy applications on their public cloud providers (such as AWS, Google, or Azure) or deploy applications behind a corporate firewall on a local area network. There may be many reasonable security, privacy, or technology-related reasons behind the choice of internal deployment.

Will Low Code Replace Developers?

The function of a low-code development platform is becoming increasingly powerful. However, its purpose is to make developers more efficient, not replace them. The reality is that low code is designed to replace repeatable processes and functions. The processes and functions specific to a particular use case still require some hand-written code. The low code may allow you to achieve 99% of the progress, but the remaining 1% is the most important for completing the job and ultimately the place where your project or business process is different from other projects or business processes.

Source:Low Code

Using the low-code development platform, developers will spend more time completing higher-value tasks, such as collaborating with stakeholders, understanding business requirements, and iterating user acceptance tests to produce solutions that deliver exceptional value.

How Does the Development Team Maximize Low Code Tools?

Cultivate a Culture of Cooperation

The development team must determine how business users participate in low-code development projects as early as possible. For example, business users can provide assistance by designing business processes directly in the low-code platform itself. Since both business users and developers have the same design environment, developers will quickly identify issues with the proposed design and give feedback or request clarification on the proposed implementation.

Democratization Development

The low-code platform can provide developers with greater flexibility in the tasks assigned in the project. In some cases, front-end developers may become full-stack developers and vice versa.

Ideally, if the low-code platform also supports multilingual development, you can have more flexibility in the talent pool and develop projects based on this talent pool.

Look for Opportunities in Low-Code Platforms

Please remember that low-code tools exist to help developers.
When a platform is used reasonably, developers are more productive and can allocate time for other important things, such as collaboration with interested parties.

Quell Fear

By this year, the market value of the low-code market will be close to $15 billion, and it will not slow down any time soon. But this does not mean that developers should be afraid of low code，it’s far from the truth. The establishment of the LCAD platform helps to make their lives easier and avoids the hassle of writing repetitive, sameness codes. Developers should find a way to use the LCAD platform instead of worrying about such damage. This is a great opportunity for them to maximize their development time and find time-saving ways to build other products and applications.

Author bio

Chen Qi, a senior agile test consultant, as a team member of ZenTao, a well-known domestic project management software, is mainly responsible for the open-source automated test management framework- the development of ZTF. With more than ten years of practical experience in the agile process, he is now committed to the practice and research in test automation and DevOps.