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Enabling Rapid Enterprise Growth With Citizen Development

Gautam Nimmagadda Dec 03, 2022

Digital acceleration is no longer just a buzzword; it is now a reality. The main goal of innovation-driven businesses is to provide digital solutions to users' (internal and external) changing needs. Making business units (sales, marketing, HR, etc.) somewhat independent in terms of developing their digital apps and automating their paper-based procedures with minimal assistance from IT teams is urgently needed. This is where enterprises can innovate by adopting citizen development and:

Ease the workload of professional programmers
Reduce the backlog of IT

What is Citizen Development?

Enterprise innovation difficulties necessitate the democratisation of software development, allowing business users to create priority-specific apps on their own while adhering to IT teams' instructions.

Such democratisation can be realised with Citizen Development - which focuses on enabling the non-technical workforce to build bespoke applications using no-code platforms.

The larger purpose of citizen development is to empower business users, or non-IT professionals, from every department of the organization like HR, production, sales or supply chain (leveraging no-code platforms to make digital transformation happen). Imagine building priority-specific apps with just a few weeks of no-code training. In other words, a non-IT professional may become a citizen developer, also known as a DIY developer.

In today's organisations, there is a lot of unmet need that central IT solution teams cannot possibly fill. When given no-code tools, citizen developers can produce solutions ten times more quickly than they could if they only used programming. They design applications that are unlikely to ever be seen by IT, because they are the ones facing the problem, solving issues as they arise. Developers and architects may focus on the trickier problems that really benefit the business. It leads to better business outcomes and enhances overall productivity (for instance, 98 per cent less time spent producing operational dashboards).

A wide range of applications can be built with Citizen Development

Using the straightforward drag-and-drop capabilities of a no-code platform, citizen developers can create process automation and other enterprise-level applications, while less skilled developers can maintain those apps. This allows more seasoned programmers to take on tasks with higher strategic significance and guarantees that their specific knowledge is utilised.

From a single no-code platform, citizen developers can create and customise administrative, data-tracking, and reporting tools. Typically, different apps are spread across many departments and go unnoticed by IT teams for each feature. IT teams may quickly monitor and maintain apps by using a single no-code platform to configure all of the applications.

It takes a lot of planning to roll out Citizen Development.

To support company innovation, citizen development requires coverage at the strategic, tactical, and operational levels. It's critical to establish fusion teams and define roles and duties for technical personnel and citizen developers.

A few pointers to remember

A citizen development advocate who can guide or influence both the IT teams and citizen developers should be part of the team to monitor whether the strategic objectives are being accomplished. The CEO or CIO would be a good candidate for this position. If necessary, he or she can also serve as an intermediary between business users and IT staff.
Even though no-code platforms don't require considerable coding knowledge, programmers who want to oversee and manage the tools and applications created by citizen developers still need some technical and tactical expertise. Your technical personnel must be familiar with no-code applications to successfully complete integrations with third-party solutions.
Such assistance can be given by no-code masters or citizen development mentors to both programmers and citizen developers. They aren't skilled programmers, but they know how no-code platforms work and can teach citizen developers or help them with complicated jobs like API integrations
No-code masters and citizen developers, respectively, share some operational tasks and responsibilities. You may embed citizen developers in one or more departments or business units, depending on how your organisation operates (centralised or decentralised).

You must choose whether you will use the no-code technique to create departmental workflow applications or customer-facing apps when establishing the scope of work for citizen developers. Specifying the minimum and a maximum number of hours for citizen development is crucial because creating applications is not the primary responsibility of citizen developers (business users).

Conclusion

With the emergence of citizen developers, software development is becoming more democratic, representing a significant paradigm change. Due to realities like shadow IT, this could appear frightening, but in this situation, having a clear set of governance principles, roles, and responsibilities can make citizen development a successful endeavour.

Pushing non-technical staff toward citizen development is crucial as more and more businesses are adopting a hybrid workforce model (including on-premises IT teams) to not overburden IT personnel with run-rate tasks. Business analysts, product designers, and marketers can now become citizen engineers thanks to no-code platforms that democratise and speed up innovation.