[rawgabbit]

In my part of the world, IT has settled on Salesforce. We use flows (visual tool) for basic automation. For more complex scenarios, we have to resort to using Apex which is similar to Java programming and Mulesoft which has a GUI front end but you end using a lot of Java. Salesforce also released Mulesoft Composer which is a separate product; Mulesoft Composer is targeted at Admins and lets you connect external systems again using a visual tool.

The business, however, loves loves loves Smartsheet. Smartsheet looks like excel; but we had configured it to power all kinds of business processes/forms/automation/websites. It is pricey though.

Regarding your questions: SLDC is hit or miss. My attitude is to get the business involved early in these low code tools as they are ultimate judge of "correctness".

I don't think we save time. If you have a 100x developer, they can create all of these things much faster than these low code tools. The problem is we don't have 100x developers. If we did, they will probably leave for better jobs. What we do gain is the ability to create things by our junior developers and admins.

The tools are only good as the vendor support. We want the junior developers and admins to reach out to vendor support for issues and training. We don't want the junior developers and admins to become "project managers" and nag the senior developers.