OutSystems, a low-code software provider, recently released The State of Application Development, 2018 report to identify how IT is responding to digital disruption and innovation.
The survey of over 3,500 IT pros reveals the major trends in application development, challenges faced by application developers, and the strategies used by IT teams to accelerate delivery of applications.
Top findings of The State of Application Development, 2018 report:
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Demand for app development is increasing
According to the report, the demand for application development in 2018 is at all-time high. Around 42% of IT pros had plans to deliver 10 or more apps this year, 21% to deliver 25 or more, while 10% to deliver 100 or more.
Of all the apps planned to be developed in 2018, 37% will be innovation, while 63% will either be replacement or update to the existing applications.
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Developers taking excessive time to develop applications
47% respondents said that developers take an average time of five months or more to deliver a web or mobile application. Respondents indicated that mobile apps take more time in development as compared to web apps.
28% of the organizations were either unhappy or somewhat unhappy about the time taken to deliver applications.
Only 19% organizations were happy with the speed of application delivery.
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Majority of organizations investing in cloud to accelerate application delivery
To increase the speed of application delivery, 77% of organizations invested in cloud over the past year, followed by 31% in low-code, 26% in mobile app development platforms.
Of the 77% organizations who invested in cloud, 29% preferred AWS, followed by 21% and 13% which invested in Azure and Google Cloud, respectively.
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Failing to gain maturity despite investment in agile tools
60% of organizations invested in agile tools and services in the past year, but the average agile maturity score remained at just 2.6 out of 5.
40% of organizations described their DevOps maturity level between ‘Just Starting’ and ‘Fundamental’.
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Over half of organizations had a backlog of 1-10 apps
Mid-sized enterprises had worse backlog of web and mobile apps compared to large enterprises. 53% SMEs had a backlog of 1 to 10 apps, while 17% indicated more than 10 app backlogs. Only 30% organizations had no backlogs.
Further, 59% respondents said that their backlogs remained the same over the past year, while 32% indicated improvement in their backlogs.
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Hiring of development skills taking longer and costing more
65% of the organizations hired web or mobile developers in the past year. 80% of the respondents said that there’s a lack of developer skills, and hiring takes longer and costs more.
43% respondents believed that hiring of both web and mobile development skills are were hard to hire, while 20% said that it was difficult particularly for mobile app development.
Suggested reading: Why IT leaders aren’t committed to DevSecOps?
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Low-code development becoming mainstream
The low-code development is becoming the new norm for organizations. 34% of organizations were already using a low-code platform, and 9% were expecting to start using one.
According to OutSystems report, the organizations using low-code are more likely to accelerate application delivery, gain more agile and DevOps maturity, and reduce app backlogs.
To download a copy of the full report, click here.
