The Do's and Don'ts of Citizen Development in RPA

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is a crucial component for businesses in their digital transformation journey. Implementing RPA allows for increased productivity and operational efficiency, whilst minimising business costs. RPA frees up businesses to focus on customer-based outcomes, rather than getting tangled in the mundane of today. To digitally transform a business, everybody needs to get involved. Individuals across the organisation will have knowledge of their own complicated business landscape. This provides them with an opportunity to become a key component in a digital transformation journey.

These individuals are often referred to as Citizen Developers. Citizen Developers are employees with specialist business knowledge but no formal background in computer science or software engineering. They use low-code/no-code tools to produce automations. Tools such as UiPath Studio X / Workato / BluePrism / Automation Anywhere, provide a business-friendly user interface to enable non-IT users to drag and drop components, and connect them into a workflow to create new software applications / automation.

Traditional application development can cost anywhere between $50,000 to $250,000 [1] depending on the scale and scope of the project, the number of features implemented and the number of supported users. For large enterprises, this might not seem like a lot. But to smaller businesses, such as start-ups who are operate on a limited budget, this can be a deal breaker. Using low-code/no-code tools allows for business application creation within days at a fraction of the price of a traditional application, without sacrificing quality, features, or scale.

Gartner predicts ‘By 2024, low-code application development will be responsible for more than 65% of application development activity. [2]’ With IT Departments not having the capacity or business knowledge to automate every process, this is where Citizen Developers fit into the digital transformation process.

But digital transformation programs will only succeed if you remember to do, and don’t do, certain things.

1.?????Do - Get Support from Leadership around RPA Digital Transformation

This might seem like a no-brainer, but your citizen developer initiative will need support from your leadership team. They need to invest in an automation-first mindset and provide the funds needed to hire a team to make it happen. Behind every RPA digital transformation process should be an Automation Centre of Excellence (CoE) which is staffed by employees with coding skills and specialist knowledge in RPA low-code/no-code tools. A COE will run an RPA program within a business. They will help choose the right automation platform and work to identify business areas that will benefit from RPA.

Next, leadership will need to support Citizen Development in your RPA program. They should help plan the strategic direction, and provide oversight and guidance long-term. Visible leadership involvement provides credibility to a program, and signals its importance to a company.

2.?????Don't - Force Everyone to Become A Citizen Developer

A trap that some organisations fall into is they believe everyone can be a Citizen Developer. The hard truth is everyone cannot - not every person can play a piano. Effort is required to identify the right individuals who can become Citizen Developers. Possessing business acumen alone is not enough. Chosen individuals must have a drive and hunger for digital transformation.

Time must also be allocated for them to produce an automation for their team or business area. They must work in collaboration with the RPA CoE to learn and share what they have built and take on constructive criticism to learn how to become more proficient at the RPA low-code/no-code tools they use.

Citizen Developers must work with their teams to identify use cases for automation and enjoy learning new low-code/no-code tooling. They will be excited to make a change in their organization and will be enthused to identify processes suitable for automation in their team and business area.

Finding these individuals will take time and effort, but will be worth it.

3.?????Do - Create a Governance Framework

Governance is critical to the success of any Citizen Developers in RPA. It establishes clear rules and expectations for Citizen Developers to allow them to develop automation. A CoE should review and approve automation ideas submitted by Citizen Developers. The COE needs to determine if an automation:

●??????is unfeasible to build, thus saving time in the long run.

●??????has already been created somewhere else in the business.

●??????is too complex for that Citizen Developer.

●??????has the potential to be implemented more widely across the business.

If an automation is approved, the CoE then puts it into a pipeline of automation and priorities it.

Monitoring automation ideas enables the CoE to have oversight of what's going on in the business. Once an automation idea has passed an approval threshold, the code building stage can begin. Before an automation goes live, a CoE must complete a quality check to confirm the process is acceptable and can go into production. Implementing code checkpoints during a develop phase provides for rapid development in a safe environment.

Chandra Gundlapalli, Digital Transformation, CriticalRiver wrote the following about Low-Code/No-Code for Forbes in 2021, ?‘Highly scalable citizen development is changing the way most of the software delivery industry operates. Embrace the technology by establishing a low-code platform workflow decision tree and focus on business friction and pain points. Create an SDLC low-code strategy with enterprise-grade criteria integrated with your current SDLC process before jumping into yet another emerging technology and creating spaghetti code [3]’

4.?????Don't - Let Your CoE Maintain Every Citizen Developer Automation

Maintaining Citizen Developer automations has the potential to absorb a significant amount of COE capacity. CoE could spend a lot of time fixing automations constructed by and for a single user. The role of the CoE should be to:

●??????create large-scale automations that impacts the business

●??????maintain and manage pipeline for automation projects

●??????approve new automation projects by Citizen Developers

●??????teach and mentor Citizen Developers

●??????manage and maintain their automation.

If the automation affects more than one person, a CoE should provide support for it. Businesses always run the risk of losing access to an automation if a Citizen Developer changes roles or leaves the organisation - especially if other users become dependent upon it. Having documentation around the automated process will help alleviate that risk.

5.?????Do - Start Small, Then Scale

When Citizen Developer program starts, there are a lot of business areas that are keen to take part. Instead of involving everyone, choose one business area to start with. From there, enable one or two business teams with automation. Identify competent Citizen Developers, teach automation best practices, get some small wins and word will spread. Teams that are overjoyed by the power of automation will inform their colleagues. Others will then want to get involved. This is when a business can start to scale automation within that business area. Involving other teams means a business can then share automation ideas and help best practices along the way. Over time competent business areas rely less and less on a CoE for help, and more and more on each other. This frees a CoE team to begin moving into other business areas and repeat the process. Partnerships with teams grow trust and are more likely to see results.

6.?????Don't - Citizen Developers aren't a replacement for your IT Department

At the end of the day, traditional software development is here to stay. IT Departments are needed in the day-to-day running of the business. Citizen Developers most often don't come from a computer science or software engineering background. As a result, they will have limited knowledge or exposure to traditional coding languages. Therefore, good coding practices will still need be to be taught e.g., building secure, reusable code. ?

In addition, there is often an issue of time when Citizen Developers still have to perform their day-to-day tasks. ?Citizen Developers will need time set aside for training and development, and be given time to create automations within their business areas.

With an ever-growing backlog of IT work, it can be difficult for IT teams to provide a timeline that is acceptable to a business area to complete IT requests. Even urgent requests often sit in a queue, waiting for someone to pick them up in a few months or not at all. Low-code/no-code tools enable Citizen Developers to skip IT queues. When IT doesn't have the capacity, a Citizen Developer may be able to step-in and complete the automation they need.

In Summary

Citizen Development when executed correctly, can-do wonders for an organization. However, support from business leaders from day one is essential to make Citizen Developer programs as efficient and productive as possible. Spending time identifying the correct individuals with business acumen makes the creation of a successful citizen developer program much smoother - after all, not everyone can play the piano. Having a governance process that is enforced by a CoE allows for rapid software development in a safe environment. Building partnerships in smaller business areas will make scaling your program much easier. Citizen Developer programs work, but it is up to you to make them work.

Sources:

[1] https://quantox.com/blog/how-to-estimate-the-cost-of-software-development-in-2022

[2] https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3956079

[3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/02/26/low-codeno-code-empowering-citizen-developers/?sh=78352485e9cc

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