For anyone who’s never attended a hackathon, perhaps the biggest surprise is what comes out. The product of 48 sleepless hours of collective work is often barely more than an MVP of the designated goal. That’s not the point of a hackathon, of course, as it’s a learning experience for participants, first and foremost. Plus, at the end of the day, it’s fun.

While not quite the hothouse of a hackathon, many companies’ development teams work in a similar way to develop new apps and extend the function of existing ones. The timescales are longer, but the overall aims are much the same: to get from a business-oriented goal to a product that brings value to the organisation.

Users of low-code platforms benefit from several advantages over companies operating a traditional software development team. Developers can benefit from a suite of AI-powered, business-focused tools and helpers to massively improve productivity. Plus, low-code extends the user base of those engaged in development to include line-of-business experts.

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But as large language models (LLMs) like Copilot can accelerate those working in specific lower-level coding languages, artificial intelligence (AI) can act as a massive multiplier in low-code environments, increasing developer productivity, shortening time-to-production, allowing faster iteration on code, increasing inherent security and sanity-checking architecture and coding for scalability and interoperability.

At present, IT departments suffer from backlogs due to current investments in transformation for innovation and productivity. Resource scarcity, urgent business needs, and essential ongoing operations leave little capacity for tasks considered lower-priority. But that situation leads to a neglect of digital initiatives in process optimization and collaboration, hampering financial performance and stifling the spirit of innovation.

Every organisation’s IT lead is still under pressure to get new features and apps out to end-users where they can generate value for the business. But the OutSystems no-code Morpheus environment helps create departmental applications quickly through a unique AI-powered visual approach. Morpheus provides live suggestions and visualizations, reducing guesswork and keeping projects on track to faster completion.

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Working from a corpus of information comprising the full context of the existing IT stack and enhanced with anonymised metadata of many third-party business types and applications, sustainable development productivity will increase exponentially. In every aspect of software development, the AI will provide suggestions and solutions based on sound business logic for features and UI elements via pop-up options or natural language input.

With wizard-driven, step-by-step prompts, connections between data sources are established and maintained by the OutSystems platform. However, adding user-facing AI will facilitate simpler manipulation of the app’s logic and presentation aspects. Common connections between business applications in daily use become a usable resource in a development environment that’s already a huge aid for developers and citizen developers, combining a GUI-driven interface with editable, detailed logic just a click away. It’s simple in that context to add new views on available data drawn from across the entirety of the information resources the business already owns.

Project Morpheus is a new no-code development experience powered by generative AI that enables citizen developers to create departmental applications inside IT departments’ rules and guidelines. Combining end-user business knowledge and a platform that quickly realises data-driven concepts, the business benefits from powerful, directed applications that directly optimise processes and drive down resource bleed.

The promise of low code has always been of the empowerment of so-called citizen developers. The next chapter in OutSystems brings that a step closer as natural language interactions will likely mean that any business stakeholder can create applications. “Traditional” developers and citizen developers can use the same environment, narrowing the gap between the time from emerging business needs and solutions that address them.

If we take a massive jump in productivity by developers as a given, there are two further high-level benefits to usingOutSystems. The first is the ability to engage business functions early in any development. As discussed, this can be a relatively simple yet eminently usable MVP for development teams. Secondly, the next phase in the OutSystems platform, Project Morpheus, will engender an innovation mindset in all parts of the business. Previously de-prioritised apps that have the potential to revolutionise every corner of the business can now become finished projects quickly and simply.

Enthusiasm for software and technology is infectious, even among technophobic employees of an organisation. Saving time, energy and labour generates massive momentum for creativity in all parts of the business. Harnessing the creativity of line-of-business experts has always been challenging if software development is done with traditional tools in traditional environments. But with OutSystems and its new iteration in Project Morpheus, a creating and problem-solving company will easily outperform its competition.

Learn more about how AI will change practical, enterprise-grade application development here and the OutSystems low-code platform here.