Why your low-code project fails
1. Letting amateurs use low-code without assistance
Low-code is indeed a tool that enables citizen developers, business users, and freshers to create solutions. But building applications is one thing; creating a reliable and usable solution is another. In the hands of amateurs, low-code can’t ensure the latter.
Not everyone can use it properly for every scenario. A non-technical employee could solve trivial issues with low-code, but as complexity increases, more skills are required. To make necessary digital change, real-world business problems always demand that low-code tools be used with the proper guidance from professionals.
Tips: So, how do you make employees engage in low-code development but still set a seal on quality?
- Establish training sessions to guide them on leveraging the platform and basic coding structure.
- Assign who (usually the IT department) will manage the low-code platform, and then set a governance to control input and output. Read how to build low-code governance
- Despite allowing everyone to build applications with low-code, the IT department should still be quality assurance, checking and standardizing the apps before official deployment
- It’s best to have business users and IT on board for complex projects simultaneously. Business users can make a prototype with low-code representing the idea, while IT handles the coding
Read our full article on how to leverage citizen developers in digital transformation using low-code!
2. You use low-code without any planning, treat it as a quick fix
Easy as it is, low-code won’t be effective without a clear solution path or a project plan. It won’t save bad developers from bad development, especially when they ignore stakeholder’s opinions.
A study reported that 39% of IT projects fail due to the lack of planning. The lack of planning results in missing objectives and requirements, and low-quality solutions being produced fast paced. Even worse, some think issues will be solved in a seemingly non-existent testing stage.
Tips: Low-code should remain treated as “real” development to guarantee future outcomes. Also, all relevant stakeholders should be included from the beginning. IT teams, key representatives, and end-users meet each other through workshops and interviews to discuss the project’s scope and goals further.
You can quickly make a change on a low-code-based application. And due to human nature, we tend to make more iterations. “It’s okay, I’m just playing around and testing new idea.” Tempting to frequently change requirements, you create scope creep and disrupt the project’s timeline and scope. You might even end up with something completely different than the first plan.
Tips: To address this, set clear boundaries for requirement changes. All team members should understand the negative impact of it on project delivery.
3. Focus too much on building, overlooking other long-term aspects
Coding is just one step to deliver an application. Before that, there’s design. After that, there is deployment and maintenance.
But with low-code, many businesses rush through those and only focus on building. Despite having the tool to quickly assemble a front-end interface, low-code can’t generate the design for you. You still need to draw your own UX/UI design.
At the same time, auditing, monitoring, documentation, and maintenance procedures, you are still on your own. Low-code may offer features (auto-testing, version control, etc) that help you with these tasks, but they won’t do it for you.
You might cut down a few turns, and the app will work well in the short term. But in the long run, you end up with a poorly designed, insecure, and noncompliant application.
Remember that low-code can be tempting to make an update when an idea strikes. You must still validate the user needs, test its performance and train your IT team.
4. Lack of integration support from low-code vendor
Some low-code platforms use interpreters and proprietary architecture stacks, which might constrain developers’ flexibility. These platforms fall behind, especially when dealing with legacy systems and data structures. Without a streamlined flow, executives must export and import data back and forth or discard the low-code-based application entirely.
Although you can customize an API, it still takes lots of time, and nothing guarantees the success rate. Explore the list of 9 top low-code API builders!
Tips: Lots of people neglect this, so remember to discuss data integration ability with your vendor before paying anything.
5. Despite having low-code, you still lack business – IT collaboration
This is one of the most common reasons why low-code fails.
While business solutions will be built by IT teams and citizen developers, it is not a good idea to leave business users out of the decision-making process. Since, in the end, they are the ones that pay to get it made and later use it.
If not solved early, it could lead to major re-engineering and budget/schedule reallocation. This happened before when a platform with minimal business engagement was delivered to its business users. The users rejected nearly every part of the platform, like the process logic, reporting, and user interfaces, since they required complicated operational change management.
Tips: Talk to your business users from the first sprint. You are forming a solid model-driven business–IT alignment within the low-code projects.
Business users can observe the creation of business logic, process models, UI forms and interfaces, and data item conversion. They can explain their ideas and processes to the developers while the dev embeds a coding structure to tailor the application.
6. Setting complex requirements that low-code can’t support
Low-code platforms can be helpful to support your development, yet they have their own flaws. One of the most notable is that you can’t set a complex agenda on low-code, or the system will collapse.
There have been attempts to extend low-code platforms’ capabilities to deal with complex, transaction-centric applications that require failover & recovery features, and mass batch processing. However, the low-code platforms do not perform well when dealing with complex data structures and cross-platform service orchestration.
Ultimately, the attempt failed as the tested low-code platform could not deliver with the expected speed and quality. This indicated a massive operational and regulatory issue with a possibly heavy impact on customer experience.
Of course, each low-code platform has its strengths. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t choose low-code, thinking it’s a perfect shortcut. By overlooking its technical limitations, you might realize the flaw too late to circle back, wasting tons of resources on unfinished projects.
Tips: For complex projects like this, consider custom software development. Instead of risking that many resources, investing it in the right egg at the beginning can protect you from headaches.
How to know if low-code or custom development is better for your scope? Best to say you might want to talk with an expert in both low-code and software engineering, which Synodus is known for!
When does low-code excel?
Businesses of all sizes and industries can use low-code, as it’s not limited to certain niches. However, we’ve listed a few use cases of this emerging technology. Learn what you can build with low-code like these brands.
If you are a startup
- Build prototypes, POC, MVP for market validation and pitching ideas to investor
- Fasten the launching for gathering feedback and iterations. But you should switch to a more advanced platform after reaching a certain number of users.
If you are a business/enterprise
- Digital transformation by building internal tools, automation software and management systems.
- Build self-services portals.
- Build a centralized, organization-scale database.
Other factors that can determine if low-code is suitable for your project
- Project complexity: Low-code is decent for making simple apps and can handle small to medium-sized projects. Check if the project’s complexity fits within the platform’s capabilities.
- If you need a rapid solution: Low-code helps you cut time spent on progress when you need to deploy rapid applications and meet the market’s changing demand. However, the application should be simple to build and maintain as well. Otherwise, you might fall into the rabbit hole of “Treating low-code as a quick fix.”
- Resource: If you already have your IT team and resources, low-code would be advantageous to leverage citizen developers and utilize what is available.
- Integration requirement: Evaluate how well the platform integrates with current systems.
- Scalability: If the requirements exceed the capabilities of the low-code platform, you should switch to another solution. To avoid this, evaluate the performance of the low-code platform to handle the larger batch of data/ users in the near future.
Limit the risk of failing your low-code project with development experts like Synodus
As a qualified partner of Microsoft Power Platform and working with a wide range of low-code platforms of Salesforce, Mendix and Outsystem, we are ready to consult you on every project!
With 250+ seasoned developers in low-code and bespoke, Synodus offers end-to-end services in Vietnam, from design, development to deployment and training.
Having worked with many businesses across industries, we utilize the best aspect of low-code, combining with agile methodology to convey rapid development within weeks. Learn how we built a Task management system for 2000+ users under 10 weeks!
What can we work together:
- Web and mobile app development
- MVP development for startups
- Build internal tools and automation system for business of all sizes
- Cloud and on-premises development
- Legacy modernization
- Low-code integration
- Data Analytics using low-code
Not just work with top low-code platforms, we also build one of our own – the Synodus Low-code Platform. Excel in building finance products, CRM, and ERP systems for SMEs, we have helped multiple clients to build and launch applications.
Wrapping up
As beneficial as low-code, it’s not entirely fail-proof. Understanding why low-code fails is the first step to avoid these downward spirals. Addressing and tackling problems from an early stage can maximize low-code development when deployed into your project without overpowering it.
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