Understand in one article: What is low-code development? Why use low-code? What should I pay attention to when choosing low code?
As we all know, IT technology has been supporting the wave of global informatization for so many years. However, since the development of "application program development technology", its development efficiency has been difficult to improve as quickly as "Moore's Law", so that it once became a bottleneck. Bottlenecks mean opportunities, so this is the rapid rise of "low code".
The foreign low-code track has already run out of the unicorn OutSystems with a valuation of over US$1 billion, and many giant companies such as AWS, Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Siemens, etc. have also launched low-code development platforms or deployed low-code through acquisitions. .
In addition, batches of low-code startups have emerged in China in the past two years, giving them market opportunities for early venture capital.
What is the charm of low-code development that is so attractive? Please read on~
1. What is low-code development?
Low-code development: refers to tools that can quickly generate applications without coding or with a small amount of code. On the one hand, it can reduce the labor cost of enterprise application development, and on the other hand, it can double the original development time of several months or even years. , so as to help enterprises realize the value of cost reduction, efficiency increase, and flexible iteration.
2. Why use low code?
At present, the main application field of low-code is to focus on the internal management of enterprises. Since enterprises want to use low-code, we must be clear about what value low-code can bring to enterprises.
1. Cost reduction and efficiency increase
According to statistics, the efficiency of low-code development in the application of enterprise internal informationization is about 67% , which is equivalent to one person being able to exert the human efficiency of 2-3 people. After the development is completed, the cycle of testing and optimization will be greatly shortened accordingly. Therefore, it may take 3 months for the same project to be done through traditional coding methods, but low-code is expected to be completed in about 1 month . Whether it is manpower occupation or time cost, low code has absolute advantages in reducing costs and increasing efficiency.
2. Step by step
You don't need to do a lot of preparation work to start coding like code development in the past. Through low-code WYSIWYG, rapid development features. Many business practices or optimizations can be developed in a few minutes and get feedback on the results. This will directly change the original corporate digitalization strategy plan. Make the overall planning process of digitization more calm. Don't worry about the problem that once you start developing a lot of things, you can't modify it and you can't go back. The modular development model will make the entire business more flexible and better able to match market changes.
3. Full participation
Different from the situation where IT personnel must participate in traditional coding, for some basic changes or development work, the low-code platform no longer requires IT personnel to "hands-on". Business personnel can also configure the platform according to their own needs. In companies with shortage of IT resources, this model will greatly increase the enthusiasm of employees to participate in information construction, and better promote the implementation of enterprise digitalization.
4. Enterprise-level capabilities
I first discovered the concept of "enterprise-level low-code" on Zhixin Informat, a low-code development platform.
My personal understanding is: the most important significance of the enterprise level is that it must be able to become an important "pillar" to support the informatization of various departments and businesses of the enterprise. Why do you say that?
Because in many cases, the digital application scenarios of enterprises usually include:
(according to business type) data information management, business approval, various report analysis and other businesses;
(According to the business department) can be divided into personnel administration, project, sales, research and development, production, etc.;
(According to the current software category) can be divided into ERP, CRM, OA, PLM, MES and so on.
There are other defining standards in various industries.
Therefore, if you want to purchase a low-code platform, whether it can support the above-mentioned scenarios to complete system development tasks will be the most critical factor for all companies to purchase platforms. Nobody wants to buy a toolbox that only solves one problem. Therefore, enterprise-level development capabilities are necessary and necessary.
5. Ease of use and maintainability
Many low-code development platforms often only emphasize the business development process, but ignore the subsequent operation and maintenance management. To know a normal and operational system, the completion of development is only the beginning, and there will be continuous optimization and development in the future. So who will develop, who can develop, and how to manage and maintain the version. Large-scale information systems require strict R&D management processes. Otherwise, if the operation is careless, it may lead to the loss of important business data of the enterprise and the paralysis of the business. This piece of low code cannot "sing against" traditional code development.
Enterprise-level low-code can remain the same as traditional code development in this area. In terms of operation and maintenance:
Support rights management for developers to achieve module and function restrictions;
Support to view the running status of the application, and monitor the occupied resources and times of automated transactions in the running process;
Support version management of the application system, can synchronize git, and realize branch pull and upload;
Support the application modification-release mechanism, and support the development and update process of "UAT-grayscale-production environment".
6. Embrace new technology
In addition to being able to support the development of conventional information systems, with the needs of market development, the integration of new technologies can produce different chemical reactions with low code. For example, with the sudden emergence of the concept of AIGC, the low-code platform Zhixin mentioned above is also actively responding, taking the lead in connecting with ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion.
Through the docking with ChatGPT, the AI intelligent development of the business system is realized, and the development efficiency is further improved.
As an important model in the field of AI images, Stable Diffusion, after being integrated into the low-code platform, can quickly call the needs of AI text-generated graphs and graph-generated graphs in relevant image business scenarios. Serving e-commerce, design, advertising and other fields, it has greatly improved business productivity.
3. What aspects should be paid attention to when choosing low code?
My personal suggestion is that there are three points to pay attention to. One is whether it is suitable for low-code, and the other is the difficulty of introducing low-code. After fully considering the previous two points, let’s look at the choice of low-code platforms.
First of all, you must judge whether you are suitable for using low code. This can be considered from two perspectives of use and research and development.
For the case of using low code, most people are suitable, because "low code" itself is a tool to improve efficiency. However, for the development of low-code tools, if there are not enough R&D resources (at least 5 people) and the cycle exceeds one year, it is not recommended to develop such tools.
After considering the above situation, if we choose to develop low-code tools, we need to pay attention to the following difficulties. The current low-code tools generally have a full lifecycle, visualizing almost the entire programming process, which itself is a huge challenge. The development cycle of low-code tools is long and requires long-term efforts and struggles from the team. Therefore, teams and individuals with patience and pressure are required. In addition, the development of low-code tools not only depends on technical strength, but also requires strong product thinking, which is very scarce in the market.
If you choose to use low-code tools directly, you need to consider which low-code platform to choose. There are many low-code platforms in the market, such as Informat, Mendix, OutSystem, PowerApps, Google Blockly, etc. When choosing a platform, there are a few suggestions that can provide targeted guidance.
First of all, you must clarify your core needs, and don't pursue all functions. If all functions are pursued without practical consideration, the final effect is often counterproductive. Prioritize the platform with many successful cases, preferably with in-depth cooperation experience with many large enterprises, or with products developed by companies in vertical fields for more than three years. The reason is that low-code tools are products that require a lot of investment. For R&D companies, the payback period is relatively long, and they are basically in the product polishing stage in the first three to five years. And if there is no accumulation of years of experience in the early stage, it is often difficult for small companies to persist.
Overall, the prospect of low-code is very promising, but it still takes some time to "meet expectations".