Low-code governance: What you need to know

Why is low-code governance necessary?

Low-code governance is necessary for ensuring that your professional and citizen developers adhere to policies, security procedures, and organizational standards. For example, your platform governance framework may define what can be built on the platform, who is responsible for reviewing and approving the applications, and how to follow your IT department’s best practices for low-code development.

Features of good low-code governance

Governance influences how an organization’s goals are set and achieved, how risk is monitored and addressed, and how performance is optimized. It encompasses the processes that direct and control your organization and hold it accountable. Applying these factors to low-code governance helps to build stakeholder confidence, lay a foundation to achieve high performance, and enable your organization to respond to constant change when using low-code tools.

Primary features of good low-code governance include:

• Elevating management performance. Good low-code governance helps management to make decisions that align with your organization’s goals. It helps them assign responsibilities to IT and low-code developers, set up your low-code development program for success, and accelerate time to market.
  
  
• Using technology to generate business value. Automating processes and reducing errors helps you see a greater return on investment (ROI) on your low-code development platform. To lay the foundation for building effective applications, determine what tools your organization will use for low-code development and establish a support system for the employees who are using those tools.
  
  
• Mitigating risk associated with technology. Good low-code governance applies best practices, incorporates security considerations, and helps you meet regulatory requirements for the low-code tools your organization uses. To improve risk reduction and management, organizations often outsource their technology solutions to third-party providers that specialize in these areas.

Incorporating good low-code governance

How you govern your organization’s low-code development platform directly affects its success. The time and effort you spend to establish a clear and concise low-code governance framework will enhance application performance and help maximize your ROI.

To incorporate good low-code governance, ensure that your organization accomplishes the following activities.

Define your low-code development program. Clarify the roles and responsibilities of low-code developers. Give developers the resources and support they need to build useful apps, which helps to minimize the possibility of shadow IT becoming an issue.

Make a plan to oversee the program. IT leaders in your organization should have the knowledge and ability to establish strategies for a successful low-code development program and mitigate the risks associated with it. They should be instrumental in choosing the most appropriate low-code development platform and providing guidance and support to low-code developers.

Establish a training plan. Before training begins, it’s important to identify the employees who show an interest in low-code development, have basic technical knowledge, and understand data. Training includes how to:

• Use the chosen platform.
  
  
• Incorporate best practices.
  
  
• Plan for the application they want to build.
  
  
• Understand security, compliance, access and permissions, and management practices.

Identify all security and compliance requirements. Have a data management policy in place to help your organization meet security and compliance requirements. The policy sets guidelines for data use, data sharing, and data retention. For example, it may state that low-code developers aren’t allowed to create databases, thereby helping to prevent data duplication and possible exposure.

How testing supports good low-code governance

Low-code platforms typically have built-in automated testing features that allow low-code developers to test the functionality of their applications throughout the development process. Drag-and-drop widgets used in the platform are usually pre-tested, so additional testing may only be necessary if custom code is used. API testing is a continuous necessity because APIs can be updated by their creators without your knowledge.

While built-in testing features are helpful, code reviews are still important to verify that applications adhere to your governance framework. Conducted by professional developers, code reviews confirm that low-code applications are sufficient for the task and they meet established security requirements to minimize risk. Code reviews explicitly check for vulnerabilities that might expose sensitive data or lead to a security breach.

The significance of application permissions

To help prevent operational and security risks, application permissions must be enforced in low-code development. The low-code platform you choose should already implement access controls and permissions, but without specific access requirements, organizations won’t really know what low-code developers are doing with data. Depending on other security factors in the application, sensitive data could be exposed in the public domain and cybercriminals could gain access to your network.

Tasking your IT professionals with granting application permissions helps to ensure that low-code developers aren’t making high-level decisions that are beyond their scope of responsibility. IT pros have the knowledge and experience to review the code and determine if the app is connecting to a site with poor governance or less-than-strict permissions.

How code is protected on the platform

Security and governance should be built into the low-code development platform used by your organization, but your IT professionals control access to data assets that are used by your low-code developers. Using the security guardrails within the platform, IT is alerted to permissions that may need stricter control to help protect data.

One way to encourage transparency in low-code development is to require your developers to use the platform’s sandbox to build their applications. This limits their access to resources and restricts their viewing, editing, and data sharing capabilities. The platform’s security controls help to ensure that only those who have proper permissions are allowed access to the system.