Introduction
The IT architecture principle of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Buy, Build’ (or sometimes shortened into ‘Buy, Build’) is a set of guidelines that many organizations follow when making decisions about acquiring and developing new software. The reason for applying these principles is clear.
If you do it right you can:
- Reduce Cost
- Reduce Risk
- Speed up time-to-market
But how does the rise of No-Code-development fit in this discussion? Is it simply another form of ‘Build’ that should thus be only considered as last resort? Or does No-Code development also fit (or even better) with ‘Reduce’, ’Reuse’ or ‘Buy’ strategies?
First, let’s take a look at how the principles of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Buy, Build’ are applied to the traditional application landscape. In that landscape organizations in essence have the choice between purchasing ready built software (including SaaS) or developing custom software (or having it developed for them). In addition, companies need to decide how many different applications they need in their organization. Obviously, the less applications you have, the easier and cost-efficient the maintenance and operations can be. In that sense the ‘Reuse, Buy, Build’ principles should all help in achieving the optimal (minimal) number of different applications.
Behind the principle
How can the‘ Reduce, Reuse, Buy, Build’ principles contribute to reduced cost, risk, and time-to-market?
Reduce
- Less applications means less licensing, vendors, maintenance, and thus operational costs. Consolidating functionalities into fewer applications means more efficient resource utilization.
(e.g. less functional application management, less updates, less training, less APIs to manage etc.) - Less applications mean less integrations. This results in easier management and less interdependencies between applications.
Reuse
- Reusing existing applications is a good way to reduce!
- Reusing also means speed; the application is already known and available.
Buy
- If you buy an off-the-shelf (OTS) solution it can significantly reduce the time to market compared to custom application development.
- Cost of OTS usually is lower than custom application development.
(Note: But be aware of customizations; the cost of creating and maintaining custom features quickly can tip your business case!) - OTS comes with support and expertise from the vendor which can relieve the burden on in-house teams.
- Scalability: OTS (especially SaaS) are designed to scale easily.
Build
- Customized solutions: meet specific business requirements when off-the-shelf solutions cannot address them or only with significant (costly!) adaptations.
- Competitive Advantage: custom-built applications can provide a competitive edge by offering unique features or functionalities. Your business can now offer solutions that clearly fits the user base of your niche market and create the much needed competitive edge.
- Control: building applications provides control over the development process, security, and maintenance. This is crucial when dealing with sensitive or proprietary information (reduced risk)
- Lean: With customized solutions you build only what you exactly need for your business case. No bloatware, no unnecessary ‘disabled features’ take up space in the solution’s architecture and solution's overall footprint.
The No-Code fit
Now, let’s take a look at how No-Code development fits in. No-Code generally refers to a cloud platform that provides application development, testing and deployment in one. The platform provides for an architecture layer with built-in security and various micro-services. This means less time building/importing standard features & functionalities and worry about maintaining the right version and libraries of those additions. A No-Code platform shares many components and micro-services that come as standard development features and requires near to zero or no maintenance.
If we revisit the goals of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Buy, Build’ principles with No-Code in mind the outcome is interesting and surprising!
Reduce
If you use a No-Code platform in your organization and develop and deploy multiple applications on it, you can benefit of many advantages that we listed above: less licenses, less vendors, less complexity. As an organization, you no longer need to maintain talent pools of different technology and additional resources that are dedicated to each technology.
Reuse
No-Code platforms often provide a modular and reusable approach to building applications. Components or modules created in one application can be easily reused in others.
(e.g. if you set up SSO on your No-Code platform once, you can easily re-use it for all other applications built on the same platform.)
Buy
There is no need to buy OTS software; you develop customized solutions that fit your organizational needs only. You need to buy a license for a No-Code platform but this is often as easy and quick as buying an OTS solution (if not easier).
Build
Because No-Code platforms offer customization capabilities without requiring traditional coding skills development is often up to 10x faster than extensive coding efforts. Couple this with an expert talent pool can give you even faster results.
This leads to a faster time-to-market, often even much fasten that buying an OTS and then implement and customize it. Also, No-Code allows non-technical users to become involved in the application development process. This increases the knowledge inside the organization.
Disclaimer! 😅
Of course, the development of individual No-Code applications still requires discipline in terms of applying best practices of building robust and safe solutions. If you build ‘messy software’ with No-Code (which is also true for any other technology) this will bring more risk and cost in the long run. So, using a No-Code platform as such will not guarantee that the solution build on it will be of good quality.
"No-Code helps you build extremely fast; both good & bad applications!"
Make sure that the quality is maintained according to the highest standards. Best way to ensure this is to get highly trained and/or build applications (at least the initial ones) with experts in the No-Code space. In the past, we had several occasions where our No-Code experts have delivered robust, easy-to-scale No-Code solutions in just a matter of weeks which were initially estimated to take several months by others, using the exact same technology stack!
Conclusion
Introducing a No-Code platform into your organization provides a flexible and efficient way to address various application development scenarios. If we apply the IT-architecture principles of ‘Reduce, Reuse, Buy, Build’ to No-Code we can conclude that No-Code is consistent with ‘Reduce, Reuse, Buy and Build’ scenarios where especially the disadvantages of ‘Build’ can be avoided in many cases.
Organizations are now able to reap the benefits of fully customized software that fits specific business needs, without the downsides of high cost, long time-to-market and limit the number of software vendors and licenses in their organization at the same time.
