#15 - How does Low-Code Platform Shape DevOps?

Mar 11, 2023

Introduction

Is DevOps just about technology and processes? To me, DevOps is about organisation transformation. To transform the entire organisation into embracing DevOps. There is no hard or fast rule on moving towards DevOps.

The organisation should pick the type of culture, technology, talents and processes to achieve a DevOps culture. I believe that Low-Code/No-Code has its place in moving towards a DevOps organisation.

Why Low-Code for DevOps?

I see low-code platforms as an alternative tool in an evergrowing toolbox towards a DevOps culture. The reason is that they provide leverage for existing DevOps professionals or address the labour crunch due to burnout.

We help by delegating and redesigning DevOps tasks and processes for a developer to be self-sufficient. For example, a self-servicing portal for developers to automatically spin up a new server for a new project.

By doing this, we free up the DevOps professional's time and resources to focus on higher-value tasks like monitoring the software performance of infrastructure or finetuning CI/CD pipelines.

Automation for DevOps Using Low-Code Platforms

Another part of using low-code platforms is the focus on automation for mundane or repetitive tasks to reduce the time taken for redeployment in production.

With that automation in place, the individuals that taking over do not need to have the necessary context or knowledge to do shell scripting or use python for automation. Reducing the barrier of entry to get things done while managing this automation under a specific low-code platform like OutSystems, Microsoft Power Platform and others.

Low-Code a Passing Fab or a New Approach?

I believe that low-code/no-code is not fab. Instead, we will be in a situation where we will be adopting either a hybrid or a full-fledged replacement for software development or DevOps.

I believe we are living in an increasingly complex and fast-paced environment that requires software systems to be resilient while not constantly improvement of the system.

Therefore organisations looking to embrace DevOps would always seek on improving the developer experience or reduce the burnout faced by the DevOps individual or team.

Conclusion

In summary, Low-Code platforms are here to stay. We should not ignore the potential of the Low-Code platform by treating this as a gimmick. Instead, we should treat these platforms as a tool in our increasingly large toolbox for either the software development or DevOps professional.

At the end of the day, what i had learned from Effective DevOps is that there is no right or wrong answer to DevOps. Instead, those answers will be subjected to multiple factors like organisation culture, talent, legacy codebase, stakeholders and the budget.