In software development, technical debt is the result of choosing a quick fix or shortcut over a more labor-intensive solution. If technical debt is not paid off, it will continue to pile up, making it more difficult to execute modifications or add new features to the software and ultimately making development teams and stakeholders wary.
The process of traditional software development involves different elements that have to be combined and tested before an application can go live. Most often, these developers leave their code as it is when adding new features. This can lead to an accumulation of technical debt, which can have numerous negative consequences. And ultimately, the application becomes harder to update, debug, and expand as it grows.
This is particularly true for insurance businesses since they are usually classified as tech laggards often resorting to quick fixes rather than adopting new technologies or solutions. Thus, when insurance enterprises continually add point applications to solve isolated challenges, they end up creating a complex web of siloed technologies they cannot do without or change with changing business requirements, nor can they upgrade their software frameworks. It is a significant roadblock to agility and competitiveness.
How can no-code help to reduce technical debt?
Enter no-code platforms! They are designed to manage updates through automation, reducing the overhead costs of running an application and relieving IT teams from managing technical debt. With a no-code platform, developers or even citizen developers can easily build enterprise-grade applications faster than with traditional coding languages or platforms. This automation helps reduce the consequences of poor programming, speeding up development time and greatly increasing productivity. Consequently, development cycles are faster, more streamlined, and more maintainable.
Insurance businesses can thus leverage no-code platforms and reduce technical debt in the following ways.
Legacy Modernization
Changing business environments demand agility in the development and deployment of business applications. Organizations can leverage no code platforms to extend the life of existing legacy systems that show inefficient code or legacy code and the potential need for refactoring.
Reduce dependency on IT teams
No code brings business users and developers to the same platform. Its visual interface and drag and drop functionality empower business users to become citizen developers and reduce the dependency on highly skilled IT professionals, which seems to be the need of the hour, with the looming acute tech talent shortage.
Efficient & Productive IT
With no-code platforms, IT teams can now spend much less time on IT hygiene maintenance activities, continuous upgrades, performance measurements, and compliance checks, and focus better on core and critical tasks, thus increasing their productivity and efficiency. IT overheads can be deftly done away with no code platforms and enable developers to rapidly build applications that can bring in higher business value.
Improve IT Governance
No code platforms ensure a reduced dependency on quick-fix third-party applications and promote a collaborative work environment that helps prevent shadow IT. Being easier to maintain, no-code platforms with cross-platform support (mobile, web, etc.) will ensure that it eliminates technical debt by removing the need to modify applications for various environments.
Cost Savings
The cost of traditional application development is far more expensive than no-code development platforms. And the cost is one of the key deterrents for small companies that are looking to enter the market or gain exposure. They often don’t have the resources needed to invest in a custom application but struggle to compete with larger corporations due to their lack of brand recognition and reach. No-code platforms are cheaper as they require less infrastructure, fewer resources are much easier and faster to deploy, thus ensuring faster time to market.
Resolve recurring issues
It’s not surprising when massive projects become complicated quickly, especially if they have a lot of dependencies or long-running processes. But with no-code platforms, there’s usually an easy way to perform version control and test new code in parallel to the existing system, without disrupting it, unlike traditional development framework, where the redundancy not only makes the code harder to comprehend, it can also make development slow, expensive, and prone to bugs.
