No-code changes everything, the market experts tell us. But, of course, we hear about something new changing everything once per year. Always a new trend. Is this one different?
Yes - ish. No-code is mechanically a matter of tooling, but the story is about jobs. Understanding those jobs will give us insight into the market and the opportunities before us.
First, the tooling part is a significant improvement. Tooling is a spectrum making impossible tasks hard and hard ones simple. The simple, in turn, is increasingly automated away. Increasing returns on tooling are shifting work in remarkable ways.
First, the most popular use of no-code is for web-based applications. Static marketing sites - and most web-based applications - don't need a dedicated technology stack to run anymore. Instead, one can use sensible templates and easy tooling to generate fairly intricate web presences. Example tools include Squarespace, Webflow, and other newer tools like Carrd and Umso. And the results look good - often much better than the site you have been keeping up for the last ten years on Bluehost! The days of needing to hand over root credentials to a WordPress developer you met on Upwork are long past.
Second, I continue to be impressed by the rapid evolution in business process automation available. At a guess, a key to these tools' success is the deployment of quality APIs by cloud-hosted services. For the user, the result is transformational. Those who have enough understanding of their processes to write them down have an opportunity to move the labor required to near zero. Zapier, Integromat, IFTTT are all in this space. More specialized tools like Phantom Buster and PixieBrix point businesses toward more significant opportunities.
These categories come up most often when discussing no-code. But we should put them in perspective with the no-code that dare not speak its name.
One example is in marketing technology - MarTech. Segment, the Google Marketing Platform, Mixpanel, and others give insight into user and prospect behavior. They require only a tiny snippet to drop into an application or site. This snippet is the only piece that requires a developer. And if one has built the site itself using one of the no-code tools described above, even this step is developer-free!
These tools provide control and insight without changes to the codebase of your valuable property. After deploying the snippet, one exercises decisions through non-code control panels. This complicated decision-making without writing code is an important domain. Like so many novelties, it has old roots. I have met consultants who have years of experience optimizing dashboards and settings for maximum insight.
This whole ecosystem changed the way I thought about no-code. The existence of the consultants didn't invalidate the value proposition. Instead, the job showed its face.
The job of MarTech is marketing. Key domains include analytics, decision support, and automated targeting. The technology, manipulated by marketing professionals, generates value.
This analogy points me to the job of no-code. The job is the job. No-code permits domain experts to express their ideas in tools without the intermediary of an engineering expert. The MarTech consultants understand the tools deeply, but more than that, they know marketing.
This pattern repeats in other domains: Business process owners express their flows through Zapier and the like. Salespeople and designers implement their ideas through Webflow and Squarespace.
None of these tools are perfect for this mission, and sometimes we see zags that decrease usability. However, the preponderance of evidence seems clear. The secular trend is toward doing the job.
What does this mean for working with no-code? First, focus on creating value in your domain. Second, be an expert in your business area. The more expert you are, the more you will see the opportunities to make the impossible difficult or the difficult easy. Which domains have more processes ready for automation? Where does the data flow that if you could access, you might make better decisions?
In particular, designers should hail this news. No-code tools reduce the relative work of implementing rich designs that drive customer value. The designer is therefore creating the lion's share of value. Put a different way: they have more leverage.
Which domains will respond next? The MarTech experience is telling: these domains are already using no-code by another name. Look for these domain-specific tools. Business intelligence is a big area. Finance is another - Excel is the "OG" low-code tool.
There is more to be written about no-code opportunities, but any analysis starts with the job to be done.
Photo by La-Rel Easter on Unsplash