5.1 How to conduct Low-Code Platform Analysis
There are two ways to conduct Low-Code Platform Analysis. First narrow perspective vendors by using Gartner and Forrester market assessments and then look at the results of independent testing of the top five platforms of the leaders by an independent organization (e.g. PC Magazine). We combined the Gartner and Forrester Assessments to down select the leading vendors and then applied the results of PCMag’s testing of the Leaders in late 2018 to gain a perspective of both an average business user (citizen developer) and seasoned app developer’s experience with the Low-Code Development Platforms. Testing independently, PCMag analyzed how the same tool handled varied levels of development expertise and a different set of requirements depending on the type of app.
To test from the perspective of the Average business user PCMag used each respective Low-Code tool to build the same basic scheduling app. The idea was to build an app that could add a new event (name, date/time, duration), invite users to the event, a Save button to create the event, and the ability to view a list of events in Calendar view or via chronological list. Bonus points were given for added functionality such as notifications or deeper ability to customize the UI. But the goal was to build and deploy a simple app—ideally available in both desktop and mobile formats—that executes one straightforward business process.
When testing from a developer perspective, the standard app built by using each tool was a bit more complicated. PC Mag’s developer tested the tools by building a collaborative contact management app called Crowd Control. This app is intended to be a simple contact manager with a contact list page, a contact detail page, and a new contact page. Other features included the ability to add photos and multiple notes to each contact, and the ability to pull in third-party services and add any additional features or automated logic to the app was a plus. The App needed to be useful whether on the desktop or mobile, so Crowd Control was hypothetically intended as a mobile, collaborative contact manager for a sales team.
For Developer testing, PCMag gauged success on a couple of factors. Was the developer able to implement the full feature set, and also simulate changes to the app over time? Government PMOs have a regular need to push fixes and updates to business apps, so to simulate the project maintenance aspect of the process, the developer also tested whether the tools could handle adding a new field to the data model and pushing that change to the app, as well as changing an existing field to see whether the change is reflected without app errors. PCMag also explored a set of basic questions about each Low-Code experience:
Were we able to build a basic, working app?
Were the form-based and drag-and-drop object modeling UIs easier and time-saving or were they harder to use as compared to traditional coding?
What customization features and added capabilities were available during the Low-Code development process?
Did the platform require any coding while building the app? If so, how much and in what context?
Then PCMag developed a trade-off matrix (see Appendix B) to compare and contrast the top five (50 No-Code platforms and answer the questions about how the tools stacked up.
According to PCMag. “All of these tools are close to one another in terms of ease of use, breadth of functionality, and overall Low-Code feature set, both from a business user and a developer perspective.” Veteran platform Appian is best for everyday business users in enterprise organizations. Newcomer Microsoft PowerApps is good for power users and developer use. Right behind them were Mendix and OutSystems, the two most powerful enterprise platforms. Mendix and OutSystems provide a Low-Code experience for the full end-to-end software development and testing lifecycle as well as some of the strongest overall visual app creation and drag-and-drop automation for exceptional UI/UX digital experience creation.