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Not so fast! Why you can’t just forget the code and embrace the vibe
Democratizing the coding process offers huge advantages for businesses but also poses new dangers. Tomoko Yokoi shows how to balance risk and reward.
No more waiting for IT
The concept of “vibe coding” holds that you no longer need to know complex computer programming languages to develop new apps or software products. Instead, you just tell an LLM what you want in plain English, and many organizations have already embraced “low-code” and “no-code” solutions that seek to democratize software development.
The rewards
Early results from this trend are exciting. When business users start to see their ideas come to life, they’re encouraged to push harder, creating a virtuous cycle of experimentation and exploration. And when the whole business is keyed into the innovation process, it can develop proofs of concept quickly and at scale. This accelerates viable projects and fails other ideas fast – all with minimal upfront investment.
Business users with little experience of software testing may not spot these issues, while software engineers may find their time is taken up debugging.
The risks
But, before you get rid of all your software engineers, think carefully about the danger of creating applications that contain significant coding errors or that are of inferior quality. Business users with little experience of software testing may not spot these issues, while software engineers may find their time is taken up debugging the creations of users who didn’t really know what they were doing.
The risks of writing code without professional expertise include:
- Software that lacks basic security protocols and/or incorporates compromised open-source code, rendering the organization vulnerable to cyberattack.
- Compliance failure – users may not know what’s required to develop compliant products.
- Intellectual property violation, which may leave the business vulnerable to legal challenges.
- Risk of chaos – you want to encourage creativity, but must avoid an unsupervised free-for-all, with users acting without regard to organizational priorities.
Risk vs reward
Here’s how to balance risk and reward:
- Put guardrails in place: good governance can protect the business while enabling it to reap the benefits of the low-code/no-code approach.
- Develop clear policies for the use of the tools, including development standards, approval processes, and deployment procedures.
- Use cybersecurity and regulatory professionals to assess security and compliance risks.
- Keep careful records of how the tools and platforms are used.
- Provide training for business users who want to explore the tools.
- Promote a culture of security awareness that empowers all employees to voice their concerns.
- Monitor everything – carefully track usage and output performance of all low-code/no-code solutions.
- Manage your data – implement clear policies on retention, storage, and disposal of data used by applications built by business users.
Key takeaways
The work of today’s software developers may soon be shared throughout the whole organization, with great benefits – but don’t dispense with the risk, security, and compliance expertise that is critical to an effective technology function.
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