There was a time at Veterans Affairs when processes called for more paper than code, but times, and applications, have changed.

The Memorial Benefits Management System (MBMS), a web-based app deployed in 2019, for example, supports families and veterans with burial benefits. The task had once required manual data inputs and paper-intensive records, according to Veterans Affairs’ Jacqui Nissen, an acting director for low code/no code in its digital transformation center.

Now the MBMS tracks over 135,000 internments annually, Nissen said, and the VA’s app users don’t have to code to do it. VA agents use modules and menus to pull veteran names from databases and see schedules for the country’s 156 national cemeteries, all integrated within a cloud-based platform-as-a-service (PaaS).

“It has to be fast, seamless, and accurate, so that those family members are not having to wait on a call for an hour and a half,” Nissen said.

Nissen says the VA now has over 200 projects that take a hard PaaS approach and require fewer coding requirements. Plenty of organizations have considered this “low code” method—one with democratizing upside and restrictive drawbacks, according to industry analysts who spoke with us.

What is low code?

The consultancy Forrester coined the phrase in 2014 and defines low code as “visual, declarative tools to deliver custom software,” not traditional lines of programming.

When given the low-code treatment, instructions are converted into a diagram of steps like “collect claim information,” “review claim,” and “attach claim copy.”

In Nissen’s case, she said, a PaaS option allows entrants to select data types (name and rank) from drop-downs and connect them to available cemetery times, without developers having to change any system logic with hard code.

Nissen describes the PaaS approach as a cloud-computing service model providing an environment to build applications, without the complexities of managing all the infrastructure parts, like servers, programming languages, databases, developer tools, patch updates, and backups. Developers can create applications, she said, by configuring elements, attributes, and workflows, instead of starting from scratch.

Low code is like having an application “template” already on a webpage that a developer configures to meet requirements, according to Nissen.

A September 2024 Forrester study found that half of North American developers used “low code for the majority of their development work.”

While not promoting one in particular, John Bratincevic, principal analyst at Forrester, mentioned a variety of low-code vendors from the pure-play OutSystems, Appian, and Pegasystems, to the ones offering low-code development as a feature, including the Salesforce platform, Microsoft Power Apps, and Google AppSheet.

Bratincevic also noted benefits to the low-code approach:

• Speed. Without having to learn code and write code, low-code developers can build quickly.
• Non-coders can code (well, deliver software). “Your business analysts, people who used to tell the coders what to code and document it, can write apps instead of writing requirements.”
• Quality. Because of tool constraints, “It’s easier to change stuff without breaking things.”

Who else is in?

Gartner, in May 2024, predicted the low-code application platform market to reach $16.5 billion by 2027. The market intelligence firm also estimated a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.3% from 2022 to 2027 for the product set, “creating a growth opportunity for current vendors and new market entrants.”

While Kyle Davis, VP analyst at Gartner, considers low code a democratizing way of empowering non-business users to create problem-solving apps, the VP analyst also sees portability challenges and drawbacks when a company is stuck with a vendor’s choices, including a provider’s prices. Low-code projects may also become victims of their own success, as the platform becomes popular, Davis warned.

“It’s a critical mass, and so now the organization has to support it and invest a lot in it,” he said.

Forrester’s 2024 developer survey found that the top low-code applications included complete internal-facing applications, “AI-infused” apps, admin apps for data tracking, and complete customer-facing applications.

Firms like Zoho and Google have already injected AI into low-code platforms to support and automate development tasks, Forrester said in another 2024 report, citing features like natural-language query options, autoconfigured app logic suggestions, and photo-to-app capabilities.

Low code’s middle ground

Nissen prefers low-code interfaces that connect to data sources, or one data “source of truth.” That beats the “keyboard pounding” of hardcoding, she told IT Brew. “Those ‘ifs’ and ‘ands’ and manually trying to interface the data, and essentially it’s creating multiple copies of the same data,” Nissen said.

For Nissen, low code offers a middle ground between custom development and a standalone SaaS tool.

“Low code is what I like to call the Goldilocks option,” Nissen said, because it’s “just right.” “It’s faster to get your application developed, and it’s cheaper to sustain.”