Citizen Development can bring the productivity of companies to the next level - in all sectors and departments. However, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that Citizen Development really becomes a success in the company and does not, as in the 90s with Excel and Access databases, result in a chaos of thousands of individual processes where all overview is lost.
Marketing departments waiting ages for their product colleagues to take care of a change on the website, accounting collecting invoices and receipts by hand every month, HR handling the entire onboarding process manually and copy/pasting employee data from A to B. All these bottlenecks can be solved by Citizen Development. Citizen Development can be the solution to all these bottlenecks.
Citizen Development means creating an environment to empower even non-technical departments to set up their own digital processes and applications - without being completely dependent on IT and development, but staying within the framework of the company's own infrastructure.
Samantha Dixon
A Citizen Developer is a so-called "civilian developer". It is therefore not an IT professional, but rather anend userwho has little or no programming knowledge. The expertise lies in the respective department - Citizen Development usually takes place in all departments, (mostly) except IT and Development. The Citizen Developer develops applications himself/herself and uses "low-code" or "no-code" platforms for this purpose.
In a company, Citizen Developers work in all kinds of departments: HR, Marketing, Sales, Accounting and many more.
Citizen developers know the processes, applications and problems of their area (much more precisely than an external department such as IT) and also acquire the technical knowledge of the tools used. This should happen in consultation with IT: Which tools can be used? Which accounts are allowed to access which application?
As a Citizen Developer, they develop an expertise for exactly those processes and applications that are needed in their department.
In a way, Citizen Development can be seen as an extension of IT, specific to the department.
Basically, there should be a certain understanding of logic and an affinity for tech and digitalisation.
Citizen developers know what matters to users in applications. Citizen developers have a deep understanding of processes and applications in their fields and, thanks to their training in citizen development, also have the technical understanding to find digital solutions. Citizen developers can set up processes and applications themselves thanks to no-code and low-code. This leads to rapid, independent development, but still in consultation with the IT department.
Because while expert Citizen Developers already understand the trade of the specialist department, an IT specialist first has to familiarise himself with the subject matter.
As a helping hand, Citizen Developers are indispensable for the success of a company. Apart from being a quick and cost-effective addition to traditional IT, most Citizen Developers have a really good feel for digital solutions and, from experience, are more than willing to actively participate. Those who use this potential in the company have a clear competitive advantage over those who overlook this opportunity.
A Citizen Developer is of course not an IT professional. In order to integrate developments and get them ready for take-off, a framework should be created at the beginning together with the IT department in which citizen development can take place safely. To this end, standards should be defined that are adhered to throughout the company for Citizen Development.
With Citizen Development, there is of course a danger of creating "shadow IT". This happens when citizen developer applications coexist with regular systems and are not adequately documented. If certain work processes are shifted to shadow IT, this can become a problem.
"Many cooks spoil the broth" - but in Citizen Development, with the right implementation, many cooks can lead to extraordinary results. This makes it all the more important to set the right (IT) framework, define standards and establish proper documentation.
Anyone who wants to tackle the Citizen Development project should see it as a change process and perceive it as a "sandbox" environment. The latter creates a so-called "save space" in which budding Citizen Developers can try things out and make mistakes. Integrating the employees in the company and actively informing them is the be-all and end-all in order to show what possibilities there are to push the company forward. Supporting each other in developing apps with no- and low-code platforms is super important. This works best with training and education, but also with a general mood. What do I want to achieve with my company? What is the user experience with the apps that have been created? How can we improve?
Citizen development offers enormous potential for companies, because with no-code and low-code, the expertise within the departments can be combined with technical savvy. Both the right approach and the right training of citizen developers are key.
Good Citizen Developer candidates are technically minded, comfortable with spreadsheets and motivated to learn new tools - and above all: to rethink existing processes.
Of course, this does not involve IT specialists and software engineers being pushed aside! Rather, by using Citizen Development, companies enable a natural division of tasks in which Citizen Developers concentrate on digitising departmental requirements while IT experts focus on their main tasks.
With the right tools and guidance, Citizen Developers can help accelerate innovation and increase productivity across the organisation.
In a world in which digitisation has become indispensable, citizen developers are the fuel that companies need to get off to a successful start.
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