The business world is constantly evolving and with it the role of the employee. In today’s digital age, businesses are turning to citizen developers to help them keep up with the competition. Citizen Development is a term that refers to the growing trend of business users taking on more of a role in developing and deploying applications.
This article will explore what Citizen Development is, the benefits it offers and how you can get started with it in your own organization. So if you’re ready to learn more about this exciting new trend, read on!
What is citizen development?
Citizen development is a business process that encourages those not professionally trained in a software discipline, to create, deploy and continuously improve digital solutions critical to their business in a secure, controlled and disciplined manner that is sanctioned and governed by IT. Getting citizen developers up to speed on these skills can be a prohibitively difficult, time-consuming process — unless you take advantage of low-code app-building solutions.
Who is a Citizen Developer?
Gartner defines a citizen developer as a user who creates new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT. In other words, citizen developers are employees who use low- or no-code tools to create applications for their own use or for the use of their fellow employees.
Citizen developers typically have some technical knowledge, but they don’t need to be experts in coding or application development. They simply need to be able to use drag-and-drop tools or templates to connect APIs and create custom applications.
The advantage of citizen development is that it empowers a wider workforce to design and build new applications. These applications can scale and adapt according to the needs of the business and/or customer. Citizen developers are typically business users who have a specific reason to create an application.
Roles of citizen developers often include:
- Business Analyst or Decision Maker
- Product Owner or Technical Manager
- Subject Matter Expert (e.g., tax experts, marketing experts, etc.) This role is very common as subject matter experts often have a wealth of technical and domain knowledge that can be applied to many different problems.
- Developer (but with less coding and more application design)
Why is there a growing need for citizen development?
There are several reasons why businesses are turning to citizen developers. Some of the main reasons include:
The need for speed
In a fast-paced, constantly-evolving business world, businesses need applications that can keep up with the competition. Citizen developers can help businesses create custom applications quickly and efficiently.
The need for flexibility
Businesses often need applications that can adapt to changing needs and requirements. Citizen developers can help businesses build applications that are flexible and able to change as needed.
The need for innovation
To stay ahead of the competition, businesses need to continually innovate and come up with new ideas. Citizen developers can help businesses come up with new ideas for applications and build them.
The need to scale
In order to reach and serve more customers, businesses need applications that can scale up in order to meet growing needs and requirements. Citizen developers can assist companies to develop applications that are reliable and have capacity to function according to demanding business requirements.
Legacy systems and costs
Many businesses have legacy systems that are costly to maintain and update. Citizen developers can help these businesses transition to more modern, efficient applications that cost less to maintain and run on.
The need for speed
Not all apps need to be built as fast as possible—not even citizen developer apps. But when they do, citizen development can help businesses build applications quickly and without the high costs associated with custom application development.
Does It Matter?
Yes, it matters because businesses need custom applications in order to stay competitive. Citizen developers can help businesses create custom applications quickly and efficiently. Rather than hiring dedicated IT workers to build new applications, businesses can instead empower their employees to become citizen developers and create custom applications themselves.
Citizen development has been around for a while now, but it will only grow in popularity as time goes on. There are a number of reasons why this is the case:
- As more and more businesses shift to the digital space, they’re also becoming dependent on technology in order to succeed. Citizen developers are able to build applications that can help these businesses thrive in the digital world.
- Businesses have access to more web APIs than ever before—which means citizen developers have an abundance of tools available to them.
- A growing number of businesses must adapt to changing business needs and requirements, which means they need applications that can adapt as well. Citizen developers are able to help these businesses create apps that can adapt as needed.
- As technology becomes more sophisticated, so do the tools available for citizen developers. Agile platforms have made it easier than ever for citizen developers to build apps quickly without spending a lot of time and money.
No-code Platforms and Citizen Developers
No-code platforms are web and mobile development environments that allow citizen developers to create applications without writing code. This makes it easier for people who may not be professional developers—but know how to program (to a certain extent) to build custom apps using drag-and-drop tools and templates.
Citizen developers use these no-code platforms to conduct data integration and create new business applications.
The native apps on a smartphone are citizen developer apps, as is an HTML5 app that’s created using a no-code platform. In fact, any application that was built by a non-developer falls into this category of citizen developer apps. The only difference between a citizen developer app and other apps is the fact that a citizen developer created it—rather than a professional developer.
