How to Choose the Right Low-Code App Development Platform

This blog will give you a good understanding of How to Choose the Right Low-Code App Development Platform

Before starting an evaluation exercise to select the right low-code app development platform, we should know what end result is planned to achieve.

If you are a citizen developer then the immediate focus is how easy is the user interface, how quickly I can scale my solution, and will the new platform reduce my dependency on IT.

Similarly, if you are a start-up, your focus is more on technical and product requirements whether your solution is adaptable in the market or can you integrate with enterprise applications like ERP and CRM. is there a product road map defined by the platform owner so you would know what solutions look like to meet the competitions.

So define your purpose and select the right parameter to compare and pick the app development platform.

Use our 5 steps DIY process to select and evaluate leading no-code/low-code platforms in the market.

"how to choose the right low-code app development platform"

1. Identify Requirements and Key Features

2. Select Low-Code Platform for Evaluation

3. Analyze and Score Selected Platform for Each Requirement

4. Prioritize All Requirements And Assign Weightage

5. Evaluate All Platforms With Relative Scoring And Rating

STEP 1 # Identify Requirements and Key Features

How to identify parameters to select low-code platform

Product Requirement

One of the critical criteria to define when evaluating any low-code platform. Organizations should know which category of the platform is needed to develop niche solutions for their business like eCommerce, Database, AI, Automation etc.

Functional Requirement

Selecting broad parameters leads to near to perfect evaluation of the platform. Organizations need to visualize Tomorrow Vs Today to focus on business issues and challenges. The idea is not to replace your enterprise software but to quickly develop and deploy new business solutions. 

Technical Requirement

For most of us, Technical requirements are a high priority. Before selecting the right platform, an organization, or individual what to know whether the product has capabilities like core technical system architecture, flexibility, scalability, integrations, performance, security, etc.

Total Cost of Ownership

One of the critical criteria to define when evaluating any low-code platform. Organizations should know which category of the platform is needed to develop niche solutions for their business like eCommerce, Database, AI, Automation, etc. But remember you are selecting a no-code platform so this should be cost-effective compare to existing platform.

Sampling some key features and requirements

Here is the list of various features and high-level requirements that anyone can use as a sample to start the evaluation process. This list provides a baseline to define your business need and some leading best practices.

STEP 2 # Select No-Code/Low-Code App Development Platform for Evaluation

In the first step, we identified all key requirements and features that are good enough to evaluate any low-code platform or application. Now as in this step, Let’s pick some good platforms for our comparison and evaluation.

How to find and select low-code platforms

1. Use our search platform for quick select and compare top platforms across range of platforms
2. Find out if platform provide free registration or has free trial available 
3. Most of the platforms have either free license or free trail available for 30 days period so make sure you signup and start your analysis
4. There are 3 way you can start playing with application or platform. a) Create fresh application and learn all features and functions or b) pick any existing template and play around to save time or c) or download any existing solution from marketplace if available to have better understanding of platforms
5. Take your notes and make sure that you have your check list completed as per your step 1
6. Analyze each platforms on 4 key parameters like product, functional, technical and TCO

STEP 3 # Analyze and Score Selected Platform for Each Requirements

When you reach to step 3 , by this time you have evaluation template ready to capture the scores. We have identified all requirements and features that we want to evaluate. We have also identified top 5 low-code platforms that we believe are relevant for our purpose. Now in stage 3 , we will have to score each platforms based on our research and assessment that we performed in step 2.

How to Define Scoring Scale

Scoring scale is an important sub step to define how will you score or rank each platform against the features/requirements. You can build your own definitions based on purpose and need. Here is a sample that we used in our evaluation process to score each platforms.

Platform Scoring

Assign this scale to each features in evaluation template for each platforms that you want to select for comparison. Score each features against the platform using range of 5 to 1 where 5 is the best and 1 being the lowest. Repeat this step for all features and platforms.

Assignation of score for each features for all platforms will lead to quantitative analysis of your research and assessment conducted in step 2. Now you have score for all platforms, there are many ways we can calculate the score to arrive at score on how each platform is doing against each feature and requirement. Since we want to be quick and easy so decided to average out the scores for all features to arrive at final score of any requirement like product, functional, technical.

Calculate TCO # Need different approach to calculate the total cost of ownership. Collect all license related price for each platforms. Every platform has different way of structuring the license and will not be apple to apple comparison but best way is to define what minimum features you need and which category of license can fulfill this need. You may also want to calculate indirect cost and future cost for initial understanding of TCO.

STEP 4 #  Prioritize All Requirements And Assign Weightage

This is an important step for platform evaluation to prioritize all requirements while assigning the weightage. There are different method available to assign weightage from simple to complex. The approach that taken in our evaluation method is simple and quick.

How to Assign Weightage

Weightage can be assigned at 2 levels.

• at requirement level
  • Product
  • Functional
  • Technical
• at features level
  • ease of use
  • user workflows
  • architecture

We have assigned weightage at requirements level to simply the approach but this can also be done at features level. Just ensure you do this correctly to qualify each platforms with some ranking based on score given in step 3.

Final Scoring

As said earlier , this is an important step as it delivers final score for each platform at requirements level and also helps to derive final ranking of each platform.

STEP 5 # Evaluate All Platforms With Relative Scoring And Rating

Time to evaluate the great work done in last 4 steps. One platform is clearly the winner based on quantitative analysis that template has helped to conclude but this is not the end of your assessment. The real work start now where you revisit to evaluate all platforms while doing relative comparison and also qualitative comparison.

How to Evaluate 

You already have winner in terms of numbers scored by each platforms. But let’s spend some more time to understand how each platform is doing with respect to features and requirement prioritization. This evaluation step takes back to your first question what is the purpose of your assessment. 

For example: An organization wants to use no-code platform for their citizen developers so they would still see which platform is better in terms of ease of use , design principle etc. At the end you have to make a judgment based on your own need that will help you to pick a right platform.

Role of TCO

TCO cannot be seen separately or part of requirements. TCO goes with combination of platform requirements vs cost going to be spent. Winner of evaluation assessment may be at top in terms of meeting the requirement but high at cost front also. So organization may want to see if 2nd in row is more cost effective solution. Compare your top 3 winners with the total cost of ownership to conclude final platform of your choice.

Disclosure:  The opinions on this page are of CodeResist and we try our best to keep things fair and balanced, in order to help you to make the best option.

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