Why business teams must stay out of application development

In the last 10 years of building WaveMaker, the one thing we always hear are user expectations that low code will miraculously allow business users to develop feature-rich applications. Well, it can, but it most certainly shouldn’t. I’ll tell you why. 

In 2021, Gartner predicted that active citizen developers at large enterprises would outnumber professional software developers 4:1 by 2023. I haven’t seen that happen anywhere, but there are enough citizen development programs to warrant serious critical attention. 

For starters, let’s clarify the idea of citizen development. Citizen development is when non-tech users build business applications using no-code/low-code platforms, which automate code generation. 

Imagine that you need a simple leave application tool within the organization. Enterprises can’t afford to deploy their busy and expensive professional resources to build an internal tool. So, they go the citizen development way. This model works because such apps are:

Simple: They don’t require complex business logic.

Independent: They don’t require sophisticated integrations.

Internal: They don’t require modern UIs, as the apps are used within the organization.

Low risk: They are not required to meet high security standards.

Mission-critical enterprise applications are none of the above.

Enterprise-grade application requirements

Building enterprise-grade apps requires delivering robust functionality across the following five dimensions, which business users are decidedly incapable of doing. Let me explain.

User experience

In the highly crowded application market, user experience is a competitive differentiator. Enterprise apps need pixel-perfect UIs that are true to the vision of the designer. To achieve this, UX and development teams must collaborate closely. They can’t just take a hands-off approach but must fundamentally understand the intent and vision of the designer at every step of the way. This is unlikely to happen within the citizen development paradigm. Business users will be short of skills to convert the vision and intricacies of design, such as dynamic content, micro-animations, branding elements, etc., from a simple drag-and-drop interface. 

Application architecture

Complex enterprise apps must have full-stack development capabilities, from API design and high-performance back-end infrastructure all the way to Docker integration. Business users rely entirely on the low-code platform to abstract all of this. Some platforms do, but most don’t. Either way, the bigger problem is in long-term problem-solving. When something goes wrong—and in tech, it invariably will—citizen developers can’t effectively troubleshoot. And the long-term maintenance cost of apps built by business users becomes exponentially high.

Customizability

Proponents of citizen development argue that the apps built with low-code platforms are highly customizable. What they mean is that they have the ability to mix and match elements and change colors. For enterprise apps, this is all in a day’s work. True customizability comes from real editable code that empowers developers to hand-code parts to handle complex and edge cases. Business users cannot build these types of features because low-code platforms themselves are not designed to handle this.

Performance

Enterprise apps need massive application scaling, high availability, fault tolerance, and portability. When business users are entrusted with developing enterprise applications, they fail at aspects of app sizing, monitoring, compression, user-centric error messaging, and more. Naturally, performance suffers.

Security

Finally, the most important loophole that citizen development creates is security. A vast majority of security attacks happen due to human error, such as phishing scams, downloading ransomware, or improper credential management. In fact, IBM found that there has been a 71% increase this year in cyberattacks that used stolen or compromised credentials.

While professional developers themselves struggle with security protocols, it is unfair and unrealistic to hold business users to such tech standards. As security threats rapidly evolve, it then becomes the responsibility of the low-code platform enabling citizen development to build security. This is a hit-or-miss situation.

The proper role of business teams

In a way, low-code rose to prominence claiming to enable business users to become developers. Advocates of citizen development said low-code would automate all of the coding and compliance needed for enterprise applications.

In the years since, we’ve seen that this is far from the truth. No low-code platform can entirely replace a qualified developer. No citizen developer can troubleshoot, optimize, manage and secure a mission-critical enterprise application. This is the writing on the wall, and we’ve seen it time and again. Yet, we continue to throw a rope at a fish and expect it to climb a tree. 

To stop setting your business users up for failure and compromising enterprise applications, organizations must keep business teams squarely out of application development. 

Let me clarify that I’m not arguing that business teams shouldn’t participate at all. On the contrary, they certainly should collaborate closely with engineering. The business team’s role should end with defining requirements, bringing customer perspective, gathering feedback, prioritizing features, and validating outcomes. They should handle the business end, while professional developers take care of the technology end. 

To contribute meaningfully to development acceleration, low-code platforms must enable professional developers to do their jobs quickly, simply, and effectively.

Venugopal Jidigam is senior director of engineering at WaveMaker.

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