From Spreadsheet Guru to App Creator: Paving the way to success with Citizen Development

Citizen Development: it's the elephant in the room nowadays. Or IT's biggest nightmare. Depending on whom you talk to.

After having had numerous conversations about Citizen Development, I found out how important it's to agree on a definition before diving into a topic.

One day, I talked to a person who mentioned "the person next to me is a citizen developer". Asking further, the person responded that his neighbor wrote bad code.

In another conversation someone explained they already implemented citizen development "we have a number of full-time citizen developers located at a nearshore location".

Gartner defines Citizen Development as "an employee who creates application capabilities for consumption by themselves or others, using tools that are not actively forbidden by IT or business units. A citizen developer is a persona, not a title or targeted role. They report to a business unit or function other than IT."

The qualifier of Citizen Development is in the last line "They report to a business unit or function other than IT".

Looking at this definition, the neighbor of the first person I spoke to is not a Citizen Developer, as coding quality is not a discriminator for citizen development (they both report to IT).

The nearshore team of my second example are also not Citizen Developers. These people build automations (or apps) full time, so they are professional developers. "But they don't document their code and adhere to IT-guidelines" this person protested. For sure bad practices, and indeed with Citizen Development we try to limit overhead, but again not a qualifier for citizen development.

Ok, so what's a real citizen developer? Meet Joe. Joe works at accounts payable. He pays the bills the company receives, and a few hours a week he builds automations with an RPA tool.

RPA, or Robotic Process Automation, is only one of the areas where citizen developers shine - I'll dive further into the other areas later in this article.

People like Joe are Excel wizards, and sometimes even write their own macros. They know what they're building - as they have executed the business process for years. They know all the ins and outs, and every single business exception.

People like Joe are the glue in any organization. But if you don't reward them or give them a chance to shine - they leave.

Imagine hiring a consulting firm to start automating processes in Joe's domain. Joe will work with them. Explain them the process. Create documentation. They'll give shiny presentations to the boardroom. And Joe will leave the company silently..

Before Joe left, he already added three requests to the IT backlog. His manager told him to ask IT to create a Power BI dashboard. And an RPA bot. And a PowerApps application. Joe stopped checking in - as according IT leadership, all of this will not be needed anymore when the new ERP system is rolled out. This system has now been delayed for four years, and probably will take another 3 years to be rolled out. And the assumption is it will fix all of these gaps.

Ok, so hiring consultants is expensive. IT doesn't have time (and has bigger fishes to fry). What else do we have left?

Since Joe already has the process knowledge, why don't we give him the tools to automate them?

Training Citizen Developers

"We threw 4 guys in a room and let them watch videos on the vendor website for 3 days. But they never built a real application. Are we doing anything wrong?" Yes, you are. Educating Citizen Developers is both an art and a science.

People who have written Python scripts for years, they watch videos and learn a new library. But employees who are new to development and low-code tools learn best in classroom training. They learn from examples and learning-by-doing.

Citizen Developers learn best by applying what they learnt immediately in real-world examples. Read more about Kolb's learning styles .

So if you want to train citizen developers, you should prepare a program for them. A program where they get assistance on use case selection, learn a new concept every week, and after 10 weeks present what they have built to each other (and maybe leadership).

Low-Code (LC) or No-Code (NC)

Yes, some employees might be tech-savvy enough to work with a Low-Code tool (a tool where you only need to code sometimes). If you really want to scale citizen development, go for a No-Code tool (a tool for which no coding skills are required).

Making the distinction between LC and NC is not as easy as it sounds, but take my word for granted that the easier the tool is - the more CD's will stick.

Different kinds of Citizen Development

In general, I distinguish four types of Citizen Development (PM me if yours isn't listed - always happy to update the article).

• Automation: citizen developers automate mundane tasks (not processes) by using techniques such as Robotic Process Automation (sometimes extended with AI tools). Tools such as UiPath Studio X, Power Automate (Desktop).
• Application development: fundamentally different then automation. These CD's build containers for managing data. Might be cars in stock of a garage. Or a database of clients for example. Tools such as OutSystems, Mendix, Power Apps.
• Data visualization: basically every Power BI dashboard belongs to this category. Some Excel files as well.
• Data science / ML: I think this is the least mature category, but one could also argue some data analysts belong to this category. I see more tools becoming available for this space.

Citizen Development Governance

If you want to be successful with Citizen Development, you have to be really good at governing a program. That's my conclusion of hosting several big citizen development programs at Fortune 500 companies.

• Explain which tasks (processes are too big) should be automated
• Which tasks / or applications are too critical (and complex) and should go to IT
• How to deal with security (don't store passwords in your automations)
• Should 'code' be reviewed?

Yep, it all belongs to this category. This is usually the argument the IT-folks use to get rid of these programs. But hey, why not work together with them? Ask for their help?

So how to be successful with Citizen Development?

• Be realistic in expectations. Citizen Developers automate small tasks or build small applications.
• Provide proper training and provide a holistic program. Cater a holistic program which rewards CD's and keeps them engaged. Organize monthly meetings.
• Get C-Suite buy in. You need buy-in from a sponsor, if possible C-Suite level.
• Don't ignore IT. These guys are here to help you. Get their buy in - they know their stuff!
• Use case selection is everything. Start with the smallest task you can automate. CD's like to swallow too big chunks.

Want to start a Citizen Development program or share your experiences with me? Don't hesitate to PM me!