Governing Low-Code/No-Code Platforms for SME Digital Transformation: A Scoping Review with Implications for the German Mittelstand

Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) platforms are increasingly presented as practical tools for accelerating digital transformation in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). By reducing the need for traditional programming, these platforms can support rapid application development, process automation, citizen development, and, in newer forms, AI-enabled decisioning. This scoping review synthesizes recent literature on LCNC platforms, SME digital transformation, automation governance, and the German Mittelstand. The review shows that LCNC adoption shifts part of software-development responsibility from professional IT units to business users, process owners, platform vendors, and external partners. This redistribution creates governance challenges around platform selection, citizen-developer control, vendor lock-in, integration, scalability, data security, software quality, application ownership, and long-term maintainability. The paper proposes a five-layer governance framework covering strategic alignment, platform selection governance, citizen developer governance, application lifecycle governance, and risk/compliance monitoring. For the German Mittelstand, where long-term orientation, operational specialization, stakeholder proximity, and limited digital capacity often coexist, LCNC governance should be lightweight, participatory, risk-sensitive, and strategically aligned. The paper concludes that LCNC platforms create sustainable value only when speed is made accountable, traceable, maintainable, and aligned with organizational capabilities.

کلیدواژه ها:

Low-Code/No-Code Platforms ، Citizen Development ، SME Digital Transformation ، IT Governance ، German Mittelstand ، Platform Selection ، Vendor Lock-In ، Application Lifecycle Governance