In my last two blogs on the topic of Low Code, I discussed the motivation behind
Low Code is really about the Need for Speed, and also provided a quick introduction of the new
enhanced Low Code experience that we introduced as part of Business Automation Studio. In this blog, I want to discuss the role of Low Code in the overall digital transformation journey. While there is no doubt that Low Code is a key driver to speed up automation, there are other dimensions at play here as well. Without a view of the end-to-end experience, we will not be able to achieve the best possible results. I created the chart below to illustrate to my team on what are some of the other dimensions that we must consider.
My hypothesis is simple - while Low Code/No Code as a programming approach is important, it is a necessary but not sufficient by itself to achieve the goal of shortening the "Time to Solution" or the "Time to Change". I define
Time to Solution as the time it takes to create a solution from scratch, and the
Time to Change as the time it takes to introduce a change in response to changing business requirements.
I have identified at least five dimensions - Programming Approach, Programming Model, User Experience Design, Deployment, API Model. What I observed is there is a general trend to shift from the left to the right in each of the dimensions above - some are driven by changing work patterns, and some are driven by architectural flexibility. However, if we look at this holistically, the ultimate goals of all these are to move the needles from Months to Hours in the
Time to Solution and from Weeks to Minutes in the
Time to Change.
There are probably other dimensions at play as well - such as DevOps, Microservices, Serverless, EDA, etc. However, I hope this is enough to make a case that while Low Code/No Code is an important tool, it is by no means the only thing we are doing at IBM to accelerate your automation journey.
