The modern world is changing incredibly fast: technology evolves, customer preferences, needs, and wants change, and extraordinary things happen all of the sudden. Businesses must adapt and shift constantly.
“The pace of change has never been this fast, yet it will never be this slow again” - Justin Trudeau.
Having all of this in mind there is no surprise that there is a need for rapid delivery of IT solutions, some of which are mobile applications that are the main concern of this article.
While traditional development provides the most flexible and optimized solution with the best potential user experience it has a few drawbacks. The most important ones are cost and time of delivery. Sometimes by juggling the priorities we can conclude that in certain cases, for instance, business-to-employee mobile applications, UX, and top-notch quality of a product are not the most important factors. Sometimes sound-speed quick time of delivery of an application with core functionalities with minimum cost would be a much better solution.
Several companies make use of low code platforms like OutSystems to create essential business mobile applications.
After the development of 25 applications with 25000 users, Rossman Poland reports that “rapid low-code development has made Rossmann a more agile organization”.
Additionally, Logitech states it has already developed 80 apps and to reduce 50% of the resources. If they find it useful why not at least give it a try?
Pilot perspective – case OutSystems
Compared to other low code technologies for instance Power Platform, we can see that OutSystems is not a tool for citizen development. When using it we can notice that it is a tool made by developers for developers. To not produce a bad quality product we must get familiar with proper architecture principles and develop applications with them in mind.
Outsystems provides us with a set of tools that enable the development of medium complexity cross-platform mobile applications. We can utilize native features of mobile devices like camera, touch identification, sensors, calendar access, location, and more. We can easily leverage the local storage and implement the synchronization logic so that the solution can be built offline first. The final product is not just the web application with the cover of a mobile app but a standalone application that has almost the same functionality as native or cross-platform applications do.
Prototyping and implementing UI gets done super quickly, by bootstraping the UI elements based on the data model we can create first versions of the UI instantly. Assumptions that in low code development “UI customization is very limited” and “UX is disappointing” are inaccurate. It is true, however, that OutSystems user interface customization was not built with native mobile developers in mind. It is because to enable mobile app development OutSystems utilizes the Cordova framework. It is an open-sourced technology that allows the development of cross-platform applications using standard web technologies - HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. Therefore to customize the user interface we must either use provided interface or CSS.
OutSystems interface, UI customization section on right side
Nevertheless, after getting used to CSS it is possible to develop a user interface that is more than bearable for the product that was made with pace and budget as a priority. Certain limitations will decrease the quality of user experience but definitely will not ruin the product. There are always workarounds and some “fancy UI fireworks” can be changed into a different solution that is less fancy but also optimal and practical.
Example application - Life Healthcare
What has to be mentioned is that application distribution is particularly easy. We have an option to distribute the product as PWA or a stand-alone application. Tool generate all the build types of Android and iOS applications. We can distribute it internally or publish it to the respective stores. Releasing a new version of the application is often seamless and users are not required to perform any action to have their version updated. OutSystems takes care of the process. In certain cases, for instance, importing a new native plugin or changing the application icon the platform can not do its job and the application has to be updated traditionally.
It takes a lot more than just fancy flying
Based on my elaboration, it seems that OutSystems might be a great solution for a project where rapid delivery and low development cost are valued over UI and UX. That’s right, OutSystems increase the speed of development significantly. However, claim that it is up to 10 times faster is a bit too optimistic.
We must remember that developing software with OutSystems is still a complex process. It is not only programming itself. OutSystems is not magic. It does not help with service deisgn, UI design, planning, defining product requirements, and specifications. The procedure also involves thorough testing. The final product must be tested and evaluated as carefully as a traditional software product.
From the developer’s perspective, the biggest issue seems to be the unknown, unknown what is impossible to perform with a given technology. Sometimes we might lose some, or even a lot of time trying to achieve something undoable. For instance, OutSystems doesn’t allow us to create a camera view in which we attach other views. Another example is the customization of a floating action button, which we can’t make disappear and appear based on user scrolling. After realizing it, we must adapt and find a good workaround. It is tiresome.
If we are hasty and a low code platform is chosen as a tool to build the IT solution only because of the small cost of initial delivery we might discover that OutSystems or for that matter any low code platform is a two-edged sword. If the product requirements include several features that are necessary and difficult to build with such a tool it will not increase our productivity but the opposite. We must assess that the problem will not scale into a size that simply will overwhelm low code development possibilities.
With experience and proper planning before building the solution, we can address those scenarios and assess if a low code platform is a good choice for the project. By doing so we can avoid the danger zone and provide clients, users, and ourselves with a great flight.
