Bringing Modern Skills to Existing Teams Without Overhead

Konstantin Dinev, the Director of Product Development at Infragistics, explains how low-code tools can help companies bring modern skills to their existing teams without adding overhead. This article originally appeared in Insight Jam, an enterprise IT community that enables human conversation on AI.

The tech-driven workforce and the technology industry, in general, are undergoing a significant makeover: development processes are changing in response to the sector’s dynamic pace, innovations need to be built in a fraction of the time, and businesses plan faster time to market to stay competitive. New technology trends like AI, Machine Learning, and low-code tools are also paving the way for the future of programming.

While AI and Machine Learning enhance our ability to work with data and improve our productivity with technology that we’re already familiar with, low-code tools allow people with little technical expertise to build projects varying from basic layouts to more complex single-page applications (SPA). As the market becomes more mature with an increasing number of competitive solutions, organizations are trying to tackle the skill gap so they can assemble teams with the right know-how that can utilize modern-day platforms without difficulty. 

According to the Reveal 2024 Top Software Challenges Survey, limited resources, high workloads, development backlogs, and a shortage of skilled developers are some of the biggest roadblocks that software developers, CIOs, enterprises, and teams face.  Here’s something to keep in mind: Low-code tools bring modern skills to existing teams without a steep learning curve. In other words, low-code eliminates the additional time, resources, and difficulty that is typically required with the complex tasks of designing, coding, testing, and deploying apps.

According to the Reveal survey, “nearly all of the 585 respondents (90.4 percent) said that low-code tools boosted developer productivity in their organizations.”

Low-code tools accomplish this in several distinct ways: 

• Low-code platforms typically feature intuitive visual interfaces and drag-and-drop functionality. 
• Existing team members can quickly learn to use these tools with minimal training. 
• Teams can develop and deploy pixel-perfect apps up to 80 percent faster, as low-code tools are flexible enough to deliver production-ready, enterprise-grade code for all major web platforms. 

What Are the Range of Skills That Low-Code Adds?

There are core programming skills like knowing a programming language for front-end and back-end, including JavaScript, Python, PHP, C#, etc., without which you cannot start a career as a developer. Developers should be able to create and style web pages with HTML and CSS, as well as responsive designs, to ensure websites work on various devices and screen sizes. Database management skills, handling APIs and web services, version control, testing, and debugging are also fundamentals for developers. In addition, developers need to master cloud computing and software development methodologies such as Agile and Scrum, as well as DevOps practices. 

Many modern skills are emerging as mandatory for building great UX and high-performing apps faster and more effectively: 

• Rapid application development: Teams should be able to quickly create prototypes, validate ideas, gather feedback, and move forward with quicker iterations. 
• Cross-functional collaboration: Bridges the gap between non-technical stakeholders, developers, and designers, especially when using a single source of truth, such as low-code tools. 
• Diversification of skills and democratization of code: Empowering citizen developers can allow for faster product delivery by reducing the number of resources invested in mundane and repetitive tasks. While citizen developers work on simpler tasks, automated workflows, building dashboards, etc., more experienced software engineers can handle the business logic and more complex tasks. 
• Agility, flexibility, and continuous improvement: As business requirements and market conditions change, people should be able to adapt quickly to ensure scalability. 

Here are three ways low-code tools bring these skills to teams without overhead: through their drag-and-drop design, code generation, automation, and almost no learning curve. 

Factor #1: Drag-And-Drop Interface + Real UI Components 

Low-code platforms like App Builder™ deliver intuitive visual interfaces and drag-and-drop functionality, making them accessible to team members with varying levels of technical expertise. Users can easily choose from a toolbox of pre-built but reusable components for different frameworks, drag them, and then drop them into the design canvas. From then on, people can benefit from easily connecting live data from Web API endpoints, OpenAPI schemas, or static JSON. Built-in themes and options for additional customizations are also available. 

Factor #2: Generating Production-Ready Code Instantly 

Teams can develop and deploy pixel-perfect apps up to 80 percent faster, as low-code tools are flexible enough to deliver production-ready, enterprise-grade code for all major web platforms (Angular, Blazor, Web Components, and React). This allows them to refocus time and talent on the challenges that matter most. With App Builder, for example, developers benefit from a Common App Model that is the centerpiece of the system.

It allows users to describe applications in a framework-agnostic manner. 

• Abstracts are a way to define application structure, views, and interactions. 
• It allows the same app to be used with different technologies. Switching from React to Angular, for example, may take months or even years, depending on the size of the application and the skillset of the developers, but with App Builder, this happens with the click of a button. 
• Takes a design, makes it understandable, and enables code generation for Angular, Blazor, Web Components, or React. 
• Defines common patterns across technologies. 
• It is generated by design tool parsers on top of the UI kits, the App Builder, or other third-party plugins. 

Factor #3: No Steep Learning Curve 

Existing team members can quickly learn to use these tools with minimal training, enabling them to acquire modern skills without extensive retraining or hiring. Comprehensive documentation, how-to video tutorials, and step-by-step blog posts allow everyone to access useful learning resources that speed up the adoption process. These ensure clear, actionable guidance that helps users swiftly understand and apply new concepts. In other words, teams know how to leverage modern-day low-code tools, and they’ve learned to use them fast. 

In Conclusion 

Introducing modern skills to existing teams without adding significant overhead can be challenging. Sometimes, this may require a structured approach involving assessment of skill gaps, specific areas for modernization, targeting training, planning what tasks to optimize, etc. But low-code platforms offer a streamlined solution to this challenge, enabling companies, developers, and even C-level executives to enhance their capabilities efficiently and effectively.

Automating processes with minimal hand-coding thanks to a user-friendly platform interface, boosting the productivity of teams with reusable components and code democratization, and reducing complexity in terms of system integration and learning are among the benefits of low-code tools. This is how organizations can revolutionize their approach to technological advancement and business efficiency in the digital age.