Mike Fitzmaurice of WEBCON examines the findings of a surveyOpens a new window WEBCON conducted with Vanson Bourne to shed light on the current state of low-code adoption, preferences, and opinions among more than 150 chief information officers (CIOs) in the United States. The survey reveals the motivations driving CIO decisions and priorities, the role of different stakeholders in application development, the challenges faced by IT departments, and the advantages offered by low-code platforms.
Organizations seeking to improve application development and transform the process of building applications have been leveraging the immense potential of low-code solutions for years. As the demand for business applications continues to rise, however, the importance of efficient application creation becomes increasingly evident.
Low-code development has emerged as a powerful solution for organizations seeking to enhance application development processes to help further digital transformation initiatives. Low-code has gained significant traction in recent years, revolutionizing how applications are built and deployed. However, simply adopting a low-code tool or platform is not enough; organizations must consider various factors such as manageability, security, change management, and delivery stages to fully reap the benefits.
Key Motivators Driving CIO Decisions and Priorities
The survey shows CIOs are fairly evenly divided about their top IT priorities. Some feel the overriding goal is maintaining existing IT infrastructure, while others prioritize introducing new business models and services and using technology to optimize business processes. That said, roughly 9 out of 10 feel that implementing new technology should lower operating costs, increase customer and employee satisfaction, improve process quality, and enhance the flow of information within the company.
One would expect reducing operating costs to be on that list, but interestingly, it was actually ranked lowest among these other important motivators for implementing new technologies – and that’s despite the wide anticipation at the time of this survey that a recession was looming. It suggests a holistic approach to technological innovation, as CIOs focus on automating business processes, leveraging AI to compensate for resource shortages, and enhancing the customer experience. Put another way, costs matter, but benefits matter more.
Growing Demand for Business Applications
The survey data showed that organizations are implementing about 13 new business applications each year, at least one a month – and larger organizations can significantly exceed this pace. Yet even this doesn’t seem to be enough, as 84% of CIOs cite a need for more IT resources to improve to meet application demand.
This is by no means surprising; in fact, it’s consistent with both quantitative and anecdotal reports over the past few years that show demand for business applications exceeds the ability to supply them.
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Top Application Development Challenges
The survey shined light on three main challenges faced by IT departments during the implementation of business applications:Â
- changing business requirements during the course of a project,
- imprecise requirements,
- the increasing risk of managing a large number of applications.Â
Interestingly, familiar challenges such as limited IT resources and lack of support from management didn’t rank as high in the survey data; again, cost matters, but benefits matter more.
This appears to indicate that change management, requirements gathering, and application management are critical pain points for today’s CIO. The survey underscored the relationship between these challenges and excessive project costs, as two-thirds of CIOs reported not starting IT projects due to cost concerns.
Supporting this point, the data shows that application delivery lifecycles are long for most organizations. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of CIOs note that each stage of delivery, such as finding a supplier, requirements gathering and analysis, implementation/ coding/ configuration, and even training, can take up to three months. In short, application development and delivery is a time-consuming process made up of many time-consuming sub-processes.
Who Builds Applications, How, and With What
The survey further revealed that IT professionals and developers remain the primary individuals responsible for application development in 72% of organizations. External consultants and system integrators also play a significant role, while a noteworthy 42% of CIOs report that business users and citizen developers are building custom applications.
These findings challenge the “anyone can do it†marketing messages often propagated by low-code vendors, showing instead that while it’s not impossible for anyone to do it, the majority of low-code users are individuals who already possess coding skills but choose to leverage low-code tools for productivity purposes.
Moreover, the survey indicates that almost all respondents have bought into low-code for application development and delivery. If anything, it’s more a matter of how many low-code platforms they’ve adopted; while some rely on a single low-code platform, almost 45-70% report multiple low-code tools in use, depending on organization size.
Low-code Delivery vs. Custom-coded Projects
Why the popularity of low-code? CIOs overwhelmingly perceive low-code as superior to custom-coded solutions. The majority believe that low-code development is less costly, faster, and better tailored to business needs. Additionally, low-code solutions offer enhanced flexibility and quicker change management capabilities. This positive perception may stem from the ability of low-code to allow a smaller number of individuals to deliver applications more frequently and predictably, addressing the pressures on IT to keep up with application demands.
The Growing Importance of Low-code Platforms
One of the most significant findings in the survey was that 84% of CIOs believe the importance of building low-code applications will increase in the next 12-24 months. That’s even after rather high adoption to date. The implication is significant.
Clearly, low-code has transitioned from an experimental concept to a key component of modern business operations. Moreover, CIOs in larger organizations express stronger expectations for increased low-code adoption.
If low-code is the norm now, the conversation needs to pivot from whether to use low-code to how to use it. Not all low-code offerings are alike, and one of the first decisions to make concerns investing in tools or platforms. A tool tends to be more of a one-trick pony that speeds development (i.e., construction) but does little to address the other components involved in solution delivery (training, documentation, change management, etc.). On the other hand, low-code platforms cast a wider net, addressing not just construction but also design before the fact and deployment/maintenance after the fact.
Preparing for the Evolution of Low-code
Findings from this survey indicate that low-code has become an integral part of application development, offering advantages such as cost-efficiency, speed, customization, and flexibility. It also highlights the challenges faced by IT departments and emphasizes the need for effective change management, precise requirements gathering, and efficient application management.
Low-code seems to have become as ubiquitous as drag-and-drop and has become the standard approach to application development across organizations. Moreover, it continues to evolve and mature. Given that there’s plenty to address in terms of the quality and utility of various tools and platforms, we can set aside the question of whether the category itself is worthy of attention. It is, so much so that it has “won.â€
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