Digital transformations are slowed down by many things — but a key one is how backlogged enterprises are with the mobile app development process. As Jason Bloomberg puts it in his Forbes blog post, Don't Let Your Application Backlog Sink Your Digital Transformation, backlogs, “can get long and unmanageable – and the pressures of digital transformation combined with the perennial shortage of skills makes this problem worse.”
How bad is the problem? A recent survey by OutSystems spells it out in detail. Demand for apps, it found is at an all-time high, with 42 percent of respondents saying they plan to deliver 10 or more apps in 2018, 21 percent planning to deliver 25 or more, and 10 percent planning to deliver a whopping 100 or more apps.
But while demand is high, the ability of IT to deliver those apps is low. Forty-seven percent of respondents to the survey reported that the average time to deliver a web or mobile apps is five months or more. That leads to serious backlogs: “Sixty-five percent of IT professionals said they have an app dev backlog, and for 10% of these respondents, the backlog was more than 10 apps.”
The reason for the backlog is straightforward — enterprises simply can’t find the talent to write apps, with 80 of respondents saying that app dev talent is scarce, “with hiring taking longer and costing more.”
Low-code and no-code application development platforms, Bloomberg writes in Forbes, can help solve the problem and speed up digital transformation, because the best of them allow domain and business workers to write applications and coordinate their work with IT. “Since stakeholders are building an app for themselves, those apps are more likely to align with customer needs,” Bloomberg says. “Secondly, shifting the burden of application creation from professional developers to citizen developers frees up scant pro resources to work on more technical tasks.”
He concludes: “In the final analysis, no improvement in traditional hand-coding software development methodologies will resolve the worsening backlog problem – only collaboration across the organization will do that.”
What’s the Best Platform For Speeding Up the Development of Apps for Digital Transformation?
The best tool for speeding up digital transformation is one that lets business experts build cross-platform apps in close coordination with IT and an enterprise’s digital transformation strategy. That’s where the Alpha Anywhere low code development platform and the Alpha TransForm no-code app maker come in.
The technologies reduce the time needed to build high-quality apps for iOS and Android devices, speeding mobile app development projects. They allow existing staff to speed up the development of mobile applications and enable savvy business domain experts and IT departments to work together to digitize business processes and deliver tangible business impact. It also simultaneously enables IT to control data integration with systems of record, and data security compliance.
Alpha Software Corporation, a leading app development company, accelerates digital innovation and eliminates the bottleneck traditionally associated with developing business apps. The Company's products enable line of business users and development teams to work in parallel to build iOS and Android business apps faster. The Alpha platform is the only unified mobile and web app development and deployment platform with distinct “no-code” and “low-code” components.
Using the no-code product, business users and developers can take full advantage of all the capabilities of the smartphone to turn any form into a mobile app in minutes, and power users can add advanced app functionality with the built-in programming language. IT developers can use the low-code environment to develop complex web or mobile business apps from scratch, integrate data with existing systems of record and workflows, and add additional security requirements to protect corporate data.
Learn how Alpha Software can help you speed your digital transformation.
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