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Among software development and tech professionals, there’s a lot of buzz and hype around no-code platforms. No-code has enormous potential to transform the way we build applications and fundamentally shift the software development landscape. This is largely because line of business employees can use it to reconfigure and/or create applications to help them be more efficient in their specific use cases.
Yet behind all the excitement, many software engineers and IT teams are feeling a sense of discomfort and hesitancy. There’s an elephant in the room that no one is talking about. That elephant represents this thought: “If we don’t need code to build software, what does that mean for people who write code?”
It’s a natural human response, one that we’ve seen play out over and over again throughout history. Cloud computing was supposed to displace Ops; artificial intelligence and automation were supposed to replace developers; robotics are going to replace the human workforce. Change is hard, but it’s transformational once executed. Think about the long weeks teams used to wait for hardware before the cloud empowered instant computing.
It’s easy to see how software engineers might have this concern about no-code–a technology with a name that is the antithesis of what they do. But the idea that no-code will render software engineers and IT teams–and all the work they have already done–irrelevant, is stifling opportunity.
No-code doesn’t mean no development or engineering; it means accelerating delivery and unleashing creativity and innovation. At the enterprise level, no-code expedites time to market, increases reliability and maintainability while simultaneously reducing costs and future-proofing investment decisions. Organizations that have embraced no-code are already getting ahead and benefiting from better business agility.
This eWEEK Data Points article presents industry information from Ken Gavranovic, Head of Platform, Engineering and DevOps at Unqork.
Here’s what actually happens when software engineering or IT teams invest in no-code:
Data Point No. 1: Become a 10x Engineer
No-code eliminates the need for writing and rewriting monotonous code for generic products. Instead, developers work from a library of configurable components, using a visual, drag-and-drop interface to build mission-critical software. No-code gives you superpowers, allowing you to do in a single week what would otherwise take months.
This can have a huge impact on your company’s bottom line. Delivering outcomes faster–and for a third of the cost–doesn’t go unnoticed. You’ll strengthen cross-functional relationships and garner recognition from leadership.
Data Point No. 2: Reign in Shadow IT and Tech Mess from Business Users
No-code allows business users to contribute to the software development process, but in a streamlined and regimented way. It allows for transparent collaboration with the business and can actually help reduce shadow IT. If a no-code platform has established guardrails (e.g. IT governance, strong SDLC, IT data controls, etc.) you finally won’t have to clean up the tech mess left by your business colleagues.
Data Point No. 3: You Spend Less Time Fixing Bugs
The vast majority of bugs and security vulnerabilities stem from human error in written code. When you take code out of the equation, you remove the potential for these vulnerabilities. Enterprise no-code means creating software with fewer bugs than code-based methods. By building software at a higher quality, you’ll save your future self the time, frustration and stress that comes with fixing bugs and managing security incidents.
Data Point No. 4: Get Back to Doing the Work you Love
Think back to why you became a software engineer. Now think about what you spend most of your time working on. I’m guessing you didn’t put in your 10,000 development hours so that you could spend an entire day moving a CTA button around on a landing page, or defending your team’s timing or cost constraints to cross-functional colleagues.
If you’re anything like most software engineers and IT team members, these frustrations have probably been exacerbated by the pandemic. You’re likely working longer hours than pre-COVID and may be feeling the effects of burnout.
No-code frees you up to get back to the work that really inspires you. Instead of wasting your time coding to complete repetitive, monotonous tasks, you can dedicate your time to developing innovative solutions to complex problems. This can help differentiate your business and have a huge impact on your day-to-day experience.
Data Point No. 5: Put Your Past Work to Future Use
Legacy modernization is something with which nearly every IT organization is tasked, and no-code can greatly improve the process. Most enterprises are sitting on 30 years’ worth of software, usually in the form of big, monolithic applications. As you look to modernize to a microservices architecture, deploying in Kubernetes or Lambda to scale up and down, no-code platforms can enable teams to easily repurpose old software pieces in the form of APIs, allowing you to recycle past work and unlock new utility for individual services.
Data Point No. 6: In Summary…
We’d be naive to think that no-code will work for every application. But where it makes sense, it can have an enormous positive impact, unlocking positive outcomes for the business and enabling software engineers and IT teams to do the job they were actually hired to do.
Ken Gavranovic is Head of Platform, Engineering & DevOps at Unqork. Previously, he was EVP at NewRelic, Head of Technology of Cox Automotive and CEO of Web.com.