Why governance is a must for GenAI and low-code development

As generative AI (GenAI) matures and extends across more facets of the modern enterprise, governance will increasingly become a key focal point for chief information officers and IT leaders.

Low-code and no-code application development, one of GenAI's earliest and most successful use cases, will lower the barriers to application development, opening the entire process to a whole new group of people.

In fact, according to HFS Research, low-code development can accelerate app delivery by 85%.

This increased accessibility and speed of GenAI and low-code development will exacerbate the already prevalent pitfalls of poor governance.

It's critical that admins and IT departments establish proper governance strategies and guardrails before unleashing GenAI's transformative capabilities.

Risks of poor or unmanaged governance

Lack of proper governance across the app development lifecycle can lead to several challenges, including app sprawl, wasted resources, orphaned applications and increased data risk.

For example, with the rapid proliferation of apps, an employee switching teams or exiting the company could leave apps unfinished or unprotected, putting data at risk for mismanagement, deletion or corruption.

Although these dangers already existed across low-code development, GenAI enables all teams to build apps even faster. This rapid pace compounds these risks further unless proper governance is established.

IT collaboration and managing pipelines

Governance gives IT full visibility into the end-to-end app development lifecycle. This helps organisations manage pipelines more effectively and maintain control over the apps they're building and deploying.

With end-to-end visibility into the app development lifecycle, organisations can assign developers low-code use cases based on their skill level. This can boost efficiency and productivity.

Gartner® predicts that "by 2028, 75% of enterprise software engineers will use AI coding assistants, up from less than 10% in early 2023".¹

Proper governance also contributes to an overall more intuitive development environment. Effective guardrails help guide low-coders and no-coders through app builds for quick results.

Democratised app development

With GenAI, experienced developers, citizen developers, business admins and process analysts all possess the ability to rapidly design, build and launch new applications.

This democratisation helps establish more effective partnerships and collaboration between IT admins/software delivery managers and those building apps or implementing new software. This in turn sets clear and consistent expectations across the business.

Well-governed collaboration tools enable developers to invite others to share success and co-create their apps. This can boost productivity and help ensure the highest standards are consistently met.

By preparing a robust governance strategy—which clearly communicates decision-making needs and policies, engages key stakeholders and sets vital metrics to measure effectiveness—IT leaders can add tremendous value to their low-code practice

Maintaining standards and compliance

As GenAI evolves and continues to accelerate the app development lifecycle, the importance of proper governance will increase exponentially. To effectively incorporate more GenAI use cases into their low-code and no-code processes, organisations must be able to easily manage governance from a single, centralised location.

Doing so can help organisations incorporate guardrails throughout the entire app development process. This enables IT leaders and their teams to maintain standards and compliance while simultaneously reducing the unwanted fallout of poor governance, such as app sprawl and increased data risk.

Simply put, the easier it becomes to build apps using GenAI, the more crucial and central governance will become to IT's remit.

Find out how ServiceNow helps empower low-code app development with Gen

¹ Gartner, Top Strategic Technology Trends 2024, 202

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