Development has quickly become the way forward for large companies and small businesses alike. From app development to bookkeeping, there are loads of ways in which dedicated development is becoming not just applicable, but necessary.
However, there are some pretty high barriers to entry when it comes to dev tasks, especially for smaller and growing companies. One of these is the specific skill set required for these tasks, and the salary that tends to go with it. Citizen development has blossomed as a response to these and more obstacles, and it depends largely on platforms that have come to be called low-code and no-code, named appropriately for how these dev tools function.
Accessibility
No-code and low-code platforms are dev tools that, quite literally, require little-to-no coding experience and capabilities to use. Whether it’s mostly drag-and-drop interfaces or very limited HTML experience, these platforms allow individuals, businesses, and brands to perform various dev tasks that would otherwise require much more training, effort, and budget to complete.
For small and growing businesses especially, low-code and no-code platforms enable and empower teams to expand their brand in more dimensions. Having an optimized and good-looking mobile app is an important piece of the branding puzzle. These tools allow businesses to roll out these apps without having to get into the weeds of programming and optimization issues—especially as they’re still growing.
Scaling and Cost Efficiency
As mentioned above, these tools allow smaller teams to be able to create an attractive branding image and a good-performing virtual presence without needing a huge development budget. There are other non-branding tasks that might be completed this way as well, since dev is playing a larger role in more and more dimensions of the business game each and every day.
This does not mean that a brand should never have an IT or a dedicated dev team, however. Eventually, those skill sets and that knowledge becomes rather non-negotiable, but scaling can often be a game of counting pennies. Once you’re able to form a dedicated dev team, or even outsource the dev tasks, it will be a worthwhile investment. While you’re growing, though, low-code and no-code tools provide the ability to get to that investment, meeting “programming” needs that might otherwise leave brands at an impasse.
Limitations
Carving a pass to investment, of course, should mean that the investment has to be made at some point. A big reason for this is that no-code and low-code platforms are rather limited to certain extents. Small and growing brands and businesses can use these tools to get off the ground. They help to develop new apps and tools to enter new spaces, and to push their brand into the modern market. Sometimes, pre-made platforms that give the user predetermined options for development ultimately spell out very limited levels of customization.
There are little-to-no pre-made tools that are going to meet your needs exactly and entirely. When it comes to branding and internal dev, this is especially true. These are compromises that you can make for some time, but at a certain point, being able to tailor your tools and platforms specifically to your needs and identity will be invaluable. As your business scales, too, you will run into more nuances and complications that will not be captured in a cookie-cutter solution.
It should be noted that this does not mean that low-code and no-code eventually becomes useless, either. Having a dedicated dev team is invaluable, but a finite team has finite time and finite resources to tackle issues. These sophisticated capabilities should also be concentrated in more critical, serious issues or tasks when necessary. This means that there are still other lower-risk tasks that might be completed by non-dev and non-IT employees through these low-code and no-code tools. These platforms can help distribute this kind of work across a more diverse team, and take some pressure off of the specialists to focus on fewer and more critical tasks at any given time. Ask any dev—this is an important point.
Ultimately, from scaling to workload distribution, low-code and no-code platforms are simply a logical solution to the ever-growing demand for technical and development expertise. While these platforms cannot be a full substitute for a dedicated team of specialists, they can help temper a rapidly growing task-list, and help democratize the responsibilities that come with moving faster and faster into the virtual world.
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