Low-Code Development & High-Performance Software: 5 Best Practices for Building Complex Software

Accelerating app development for quicker market entry, without compromising quality, helps businesses maintain their competitive edge. The development process has been undergoing tremendous changes over the years with the aim of shortening the product development cycle and reaching the market faster. Further revolutionizing the development process is the availability of low-code platforms to speed up the app development process. One of the biggest advantages of low-code platforms is that even citizen developers with no technical background or experience can use the platform to quickly build applications without lowering production quality.

This is because of the visual development environment offered by low-code platforms that allows developers to use the drag-and-drop feature to develop the apps. While this has proved to be a great advantage in accelerating development speeds, it has also generated a general view that low-code development is for simple apps and that complex software still needs a traditional development approach.

Benefits of Low-Code Platforms in Developing Complex Software Low-code platforms such as Mendix and OutSystems help developers build complex software by simplifying the development process. Some of the advantages of using a low-code platform include:

Automating Processes: Manual coding takes time and is prone to human errors. In low-code development, flexible apps can be created by automating processes. The tasks can be broken down and integrated to simplify even complex processes.

Device-Neutral Apps: It enables the creation of apps that can be used on any device, making it easy for users to access data and collaborate from anywhere, anytime.

Optimizing Resource Utilization: The fact that even non-technical users can develop apps using low-code platforms lowers the cost of development while improving productivity. As it speeds up the development cycle, it also is time-effective and allows faster time to market.

Improved Customer Delight: Low-code development allows users to respond to changing market trends quickly and improve customer service.

Better Risk Management and Governance: Businesses can cope with changing regulatory environment better as low-code development facilitates greater responsiveness.

Greater Adaptability: Keeping the apps up to date and meeting newer requirements is easy as low code does not require complex coding.

Mendix is available in free and pro versions, with the Pro enabling complex workflow management and external integrations through either low-code modeling or Java code.

It is cloud-based and makes IT project management and native collaboration easy.

OutSystems allows the creation of native apps at the click of a button. Once the app is configured and the keys/certificates added, the platform generates the native builds for Android and iOS along with the required content and plugins. It does not even need the installation of Java and Android Studio to build for the mobile.

5 Best Practices for Low-Code Development

To effectively leverage the low-code development platform for faster development of apps, implementing the following 5 best practices will be beneficial:

Best Practice #1 Understand Your Platform: Though low code needs very little coding skills, some basic technical skills are still essential to use the platform effectively. Some time spent understanding the platform capabilities will improve the quality of the apps being developed. Some of the key features the developers and users must be familiar with are platform integration, UI design, API generation, and so on.

Best Practice #2 Reuse Components: Low-code platforms such as Mendix and OutSystems also offer several out-of-the-box components that can help developers jump-start their app-building process. Focus on developing unique features and use the pre-existing features for the rest of the common functionalities.

Best Practice #3 Connect with the Community: Low-code platforms have a vibrant community that can help with developing robust apps. Reach out to the community to solve issues, have questions answered, and collaborate where needed to improve customer experience.

Best Practice #4 Ensure Good UI/UX: Low-code platforms such as Mendix and OutSystems provide easy and ready-to-use UI frameworks and come with standardized components. They enable customizing the user interface and speed up the development process.

Best Practice #5 Improve Security and Governance: Regulatory requirements make security and governance essential. Therefore, developers must ensure that apps developed using low-code platforms are compliant and secure. Permission-based access to data and protection of personalized identifiable information (PII) or sensitive IP must be ensured with sufficient management and oversight policies and rules put in place.

Indium to Facilitate Low Code Development

Indium Software is a leading low-code development company whose team of expert’s custom-develop complex systems with low-code/no-code solutions at low cost. Our low-code development services provide businesses with the tools and expertise they need to quickly and easily create powerful software applications without extensive coding knowledge.

We work with a variety of low-code development platforms including Mendix, Microsoft PowerApps, and OutSystems, leveraging the unique features and capabilities of these platforms to provide end-to-end solutions and low-code platform recommendations based on unique business needs. The use cases range from optimizing the sales process, to automating business operations, improving customer relationship management, and building web/mobile apps. These include business process automation to data analysis, workflow management, and IoT applications, across industries such as healthcare, finance, and retail. We work with cross-functional teams, especially Advance Analytics and data engineering teams to include AI in the solution.

Our services cover selecting and implementing the platform best suited for our business needs; and customizing and integrating the low-code platform with other systems including APIs and databases. We also provide low-code QA services, maintenance, training, and support for the low-code platform.

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