Who is citizen developer?
A citizen developer is an non-technical employee who creates applications that are not explicitly prohibited and developed by IT departments to serve their own or others team members’ demands. A citizen developer is a persona, not a job title or description.
They are responsible for reporting to a non-IT unit. They could be anyone in the company, for example, account managers, accountants, or marketing executives. The most significant difference between them and professional developers is that they lack in-depth coding knowledge and do not work in the IT department. If they had to start from scratch, they’d be in the middle of nowhere.
Citizens are all business technologists. Not all business technologists, however, are citizen developers. Citizen developers are not required to have a specific skill set or time commitment, but they must be legal employees of an organization.
The demand for citizen developer
Why do we need citizen developers and not professional coders? There must be a reason why tech giants and leading enterprises encourage their employees to involve themselves in tech creation and digital transformation.
The business needs
Traditional software usually deals with enterprise-level problems or department-level challenges. While business users and employees mainly solve their daily tasks by creating their own spreadsheets, desktop databases, or online notes.
The IT department isn’t aware of this. Overtime, this can lead to disorganized data and loss of information if the employee leaves the company. Hence, having a united landscape where anyone can create applications that benefit themselves is more secure and manageable. Companies should be open to train employees who want to be citizen developers and offer them a platform to share their ideas.
The IT needs
77% of IT and 71% of business leaders agree that their IT department faces a huge waitlist of solution requests, and many more are still under development. The IT team is under immense pressure and piles of backlog to meet the demand for business-critical applications.
But the worst of all, many applications are “too good to be true,” and you can only know that when doing your research or trying to develop it. Having citizen developers, they can test the idea by quickly building an MVP. Having citizen developers, they can do easy and repetitive tasks, while IT involves where it matters most.
Discover the value of MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in software development and how citizen developers can quickly build and test their ideas in the linked article.
The benefits of having citizen developer
Meeting the demand
Today, either a business is a tech company or requires specific tech tools to aid human tasks. This leads to a high demand for internal applications. IDC predicts that over 500 million apps will be developed by 2023. That’s the same as the number of apps created in the previous 40 years! With its limited resources, IT will never be able to build the apps that businesses require on time. Citizen Development is the best bet for overcoming this obstacle.
Address the scarcity of skilled developers
With a software developer unemployment rate of less than 1.9%, the market has a limited supply of skilled developers. The severe shortage of talent places additional strain on IT. Organizations that implement a formal citizen development program confront the challenges of talent scarcity head-on by empowering non-technical, highly motivated business users to build apps that solve their immediate problems.
Shadow IT management
According to a recent study, 78% of IT and business leaders believe shadow IT has increased significantly over the last five years. While shadow IT is mostly beneficial (yes, it is), it can create a technical wild west for IT if left unchecked. Instead, IT should manage it through a program similar to citizen development. When a recognized citizen development program is in place, all those must-have apps are built on IT-approved platforms, providing IT with the visibility and control needed to maintain and monitor quality and security.
Increase business and IT productivity
Citizen development gives business users the approved technology and IT support needed to build essential productivity apps. When citizen developers create their apps, they can work more efficiently, save money on operating costs, and help reduce IT backlog. IT is then free to concentrate on more technically challenging projects such as legacy modernization, core system extensions, and enterprise-wide applications.
Break down barriers
As businesses grow, so do the organizational silos. There is already a schism between IT and business. Citizen development can bridge this gap by providing a venue for business users and professional developers to collaborate. For example, suppose a citizen developer’s app on the IT-approved tool becomes complex. In that case, they can invite a skilled developer to assist in building the complex parts in the same tool.
What is low-code?
Low-code is a development methodology that is opposed to traditional software development. It focuses on reusing and sharing code while saving time. As a result, IT professionals are no longer required to write lines of code to deploy a simple change or update.
Thanks to the help of low-code’s full package feature: drag-and-drop clicks, various pre-built templates, and available design elements, citizen developers without a coding foundation or programming knowledge can jump right into using it.
Explore further details by reading this article: What Is Low-code Development And Why You Should Care?
How low-code and citizen developer go hand-in-hand
Boosting Citizen developers is great, but having a platform for them to excel in tech creation is better. Remember that citizen developers have little coding knowledge, and it’s not their primary task within the organization. So, you can’t expect them to build anything without giving them the tools.
Low-code is the top platform for citizen developers and professionals to work together. As it doesn’t rely much on IT efforts to create a basic application. The future workflow will be something like this, a citizen developer makes an application with a few features. It works well until he wants to build something more advanced. He will then ask the IT departments for help. If the application brings wonderful results, businesses can plan to update it for anyone to use.
40% of businesses suffer from skills gaps in development. The citizen developer wants to do something too advanced while IT keeps saying it’s incapable. Yet with low-code, citizen developers can test their idea first before further scaling.
A good low-code platform offers any needed tools to develop an application. Its easy-to-use interface allows citizen developers to hop on the projects immediately without limitations. To leverage the best use of citizen developers, invest in low-code platforms and vice versa.
To harness the full potential of citizen developers and low-code platforms, explore the “25 Best Low-code Platforms for Startups, SME & Enterprise“
Tips to successfully employ low-code with citizen developer
The low-code trends are here to stay and will play an essential role in shaping the future of software development. However, embracing citizen programming initiatives and properly deploying them takes work. So, how can you ensure that your company will be successful in implementing a low-code citizen developer culture
Here are the three necessary steps for your success choices:
1. Encourage large-scale training
If you can successfully train your people in citizen development, your chances of releasing innovative products at scale and speed increase dramatically. Businesses must train and empower their employees to make their own decisions. Even better, people who collaborate to master low-code development can foster a culture of community and camaraderie.
2. Put knowledge into action
Make the most of low-code platforms by encouraging employees to create technological solutions to whatever is going on in the organization and to add immediate value to real-time projects. Low-code developers will also play an important role in emerging initiatives and strategies to support other departments.
3. Make use of freedom within a framework
Low-code tools provide a win-win situation in that business professionals not only gain the knowledge and freedom to create cutting-edge solutions, but they can also do so within an IT authority framework that complies with regulations.
Top low-code platforms for citizen developer
Here is the list recommended by Synodus for the best low-code platforms:
- Creatio is a top low-code platform for managing processes of any complexity by utilizing pre-built solutions and reusable templates. Its primarily concerned is process automation and mobile app development in various industries such as advertising, retail, finance, logistics, legal, and pharmaceutical.
- Microsoft PowerApps aims to accelerate development while using fewer resources. This sturdy tool is best suited for enterprise and professional-grade applications that may be too complex for other low-code platforms.
- OutSystems creates cutting-edge applications to boost efficiency, with high performance as the primary goal. You can be confident that your solutions will be secure, dependable, cloud-ready, and scalable when you use this low-code platform.
- GeneXus is a low-code enterprise platform that uses AI to automate and maintain applications across all systems, coding environments, and devices. The tool is designed to be a low-code development platform that promotes flexibility and high-performance
- Because of UI Bakery‘s affordable pricing for unlimited end-users, even small and medium-sized businesses can automate their processes without relying on costly in-house or outsourced development teams.
- Quickbase is a low-code operational agility platform that streamlines and simplifies business processes. Users can use the platform to create applications tailored to their specific requirements.
- With TrackVia, you can convert paper-based or spreadsheet-based procedures into efficient online and mobile applications. The platform is perfect for complex enterprise applications and legacy databases.
- Retool manages internal tools and applications for all types of businesses. Retool is used by companies such as NBC, Fox, and Warner Brothers to build robust workflows on top of marketing data for a unified view of the customer journey.
Wrapping up
The success of your citizen development program is determined by the platform you choose. There are several low-code citizen developer platforms to choose from; pick the one uniquely designed to meet your organization’s needs in the long run. Empowering your citizen developers to reduce costs, boost productivity, and meet your company’s growing app demand is the best thing to do in the early stages.
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