The Myths and Management of Citizen Development
Last episode I told you about the benefits of citizen development, the movement of citizen development, and the best way to implement citizen development in your company. This episode we are diving into 5 myths about citizen development, the real benefits for your company, and the best way to manage citizen development. Let’s go!
Myths of citizen development
It’s understandable that companies look at what’s being said in the corridors about the implementation of citizen development. According to Forbes, There are five main myths about citizen development. Let’s examine them:
Companies of all sizes are using Citizen Development to bridge the gap between IT and other departments. In larger companies Citizen Development is welcome to help relieve the strain the business puts on IT. However, a great low-code no-code platform provides drag-and-drop interfaces and pre-designed templates to help ensure consistency with IT best practices. This makes it easier for citizen developers to create consistently great apps. Citizen developers just need the right tools and guidance!
There is a rapid demand for digitization and business app requests. The bad thing is that there simply aren’t enough developers to go around. That’s why the most important impact of citizen development is freeing up time for pro developers. Using self-serve low-code tools with automated testing and approval capabilities, citizen developers can submit and create simple apps with IT oversight. This relieves IT burnouts and overworked developers.
The real impact isn’t the amount of apps you have, it’s more about how they are created and managed. This is where IT oversight comes in with a set of best practices. By establishing clear policies that dictate when apps should revert to IT ownership because of size or scope, IT remains in control. This avoids the creation of duplicate apps.
In every development environment, security is vital. IT should mitigate security risks by having the right technical guardrails and practices in place. One of the features to mitigate security risks are code scans: a tool for identifying potential security issues within an application.
This is maybe one of the most common myths about citizen development. As mentioned before, fusion teams can mitigate shadow IT. Also, a strong governance and collaboration model can help you to mitigate the risk of shadow IT.
Managing citizen development
Implementing citizen development is a new and exciting phase for many companies. The next phase of this innovation procedure is managing citizen development. The best way to leverage the movement of citizen development in your company is with fusion teams. Gartner defines fusion teams as multi-disciplined or cross-functional teams that combine low-code technology and business domain expertise and have shared business goals. The following three steps will help you implement fusion teams and successfully manage citizen development.
1. Identify/assemble the team
The first step is identifying the organization's fusion team and acknowledging them as new technology allies. If the organization does not have a fusion team, it can be assembled with people working in the organization who are the perfect fit. There’s also a good chance that companies already have at least one fusion team in their organization even if they go by a different name (e.g., cross-functional, multidisciplinary, innovation).
2. Equip fusion teams with IT support and guidance
After the successful formation of fusion teams, position IT leadership as a source of? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? knowledge and guidance for them. IT feedback is crucial to helping fusion teams understand what makes a good app and how new platforms can (or cannot) integrate into an existing system.?
3. Give fusion teams autonomy
The third and final step is to ensure that fusion teams work independently. This helps to spark creativity and free flow of ideas. Fusion teams will need to test their business applications and continuously make improvements, while IT can maintain governance and ensure new applications meet the security standards.?
Why fusion teams??
Fusion teams help IT deploy solutions faster. Besides that, it can mitigate two major IT security threats: shadow IT and dependency on spreadsheet macros. Also, fusion teams will result in a modernized workplace who feel empowered and engaged.
Company benefits of citizen development
Implementing citizen development seems like a big step, but the implementation is certainly worth it when you look at the ultimate benefits of citizen development for companies. Citizen developers support your organization’s ability to react when there is need for change. They can contribute to applications that automate processes and fully digitize systems. Also, by using a low-code or no-code development platform, citizen developers can build solutions rapidly, easily, and effectively using drag and drop interfaces. Development lifecycles that once took months now take weeks or even days which results in much lower cost due to a quicker development time frame.
With citizen development, there is also a better alignment between IT and the business. Citizen developers align business and IT by bridging the gap between the differing interests. They combine business acumen with citizen development tools to develop applications under the full governance of IT. But this is not the only thing. By empowering citizen developers, businesses can take some pressure off the IT, so experienced developers can focus on complex projects whereas business users can build applications to solve business problems and improve operational efficiency.?
The skills of citizen developers will expand over time. There is continuous improvement of their skills and value will only increase. The more experience (and more tools) they gain, the more their development skills will expand to deliver greater business value. To ensure that those skills continue to expand, it’s important to use the right low-code no-code platform. With the use of the right platform, business users can build new apps that they need which results in becoming more efficient in their jobs. Moreover, it decreases the operating costs of the business and reduces the IT backlog. This increases the overall productivity of the organization.
And above all, Citizen developers ignite the spark of innovation! No-code and low-code tools enable citizen developers to explore new solutions and business models to better serve their own needs and the needs of their customers.
Are you ready to implement citizen development?
Walt Disney once said: ‘’The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing’’ – and I totally agree with him. In many companies, the pressure on the IT department is much too high for various reasons. Changes in the IT department are necessary to prevent future problems. We as a low-code no-code provider offer a helping hand to those companies. The future of citizen development looks bright and the technology is ready for the next step of digital transformation.
Subscribe and stay tuned for the next newsletter to learn more about citizen development, low-code no-code platforms and digital transformation.