PMP? and thinking about your next steps?

3 ideas to start

The Project Manager profession is changing and technology is on the basis of that change

I am not only referring to project management tools but to a shift toward digital transformation to improve operations. Information integration, automation, data gathering and analysis, process improvement, feedback automation... The role of project managers is transforming at a fast speed. Embracing technologies and the opportunities they provide is vital to keep on being critical professionals in our organizations.

There is a Global shortage of software developers and related profiles

CodeSumit′s latest report states that "job openings for software developers, quality assurance analysts, and testers are projected to grow by 22% year over year between 2020 to 2030"; "85.2 million jobs will go unfulfilled by 2030" and "globally, companies risk losing $8.5 trillion in revenue because of the lack of skilled talent". Did you know that tech talent shortage is one of the greatest issues for the adoption of IT automation and digital workplace technologies? You can find an in-depth Chater in?Phil Simons′s "Low-Code/No-code. Citizen Developers and the Surprising Future of Business Applications" related to the war for tech and data talent, retention issues, and remote work.?

With the right tools and governance, non-professional developers can contribute to the business strategy

There is a movement you have probably heard about, Citizen Development, related to no-code/low-code software development. To have some concepts clear:

Citizen Development is democratizing software development with no-code / low-code platforms. A new group of stakeholders outside IT, with business-oriented roles, are able to develop business applications. This frees the IT people from the burden of immense backlogs and continuous requirements for other strategic priorities and empowers employees without coding experience.

This democratization process has a myriad of benefits associated but also some risks that need special attention. Being aware of them gives project managers an invaluable position within their organizations.

3 Citizen Development challenges we can help with as project managers

Cultural shift

Have you felt tempted to jump into Citizen Development just after hearing about it? Are you thinking about opening Apps-development / process-automation to all interested employees in your company?

We can not deny that the democratizing impact of no-code / low-code fosters a culture of autonomy and ownership and it creates new opportunities for career enhancement. But, this decentralized decision-making and control requires a cultural shift and the understanding of a new operating model. Citizen Developers need to be aware of potential risks for the company like security breaches, compromising of data, non-compliance... which might result in disaster. Enthusiasm could become counterproductive if not accompanied by a cultural shift.

Project managers know about risk management, stakeholders, communication channels, value streams... but above all, we know about change management and how important are people in any transformational process. We can work on the overall operating model and identify the personas, backgrounds, and interests of employees, we can prepare future Citizen Developers for specific roles around executing, managing, and leading no-code / low-code initiatives. Citizen Developers might not require programming skills, but they need to understand their role in the company and thus, know about security, data protection, version control, or system integration.

In fact, the Citizen Development Business Architect (CDBA) is the person in charge of managing the governance process, overseeing collaboration between stakeholders, and embedding the organizational structures that help citizen development flourish.?The CDBA will be in charge of working on the Operating Model, the Organization Alignment, IT Governance, Managing the Change or KPI’s and reporting. Are you a project manager in strategic positions in your company? CDBA could be a natural step for you.

If you want to know about the skill sets and experience required to be a CDBA, you can enroll in this Intro & Profile to Citizen Developer Business Architect for free.

Understanding the value stream, the link between business and IT

In a hyper-agile environment, we need to turn ideas into prototypes in hours. The fast speed to explore and test ideas can be unnecessarily delayed by IT and business teams' agreements. But, both areas working together can enable rapid prototyping and review across IT and the business. Understanding the flow IT-business and enabling it will position a Project Manager in a rapid growth context.

Shadow IT or the development of software and services outside the ownership and control of IT is one of the greatest concerns of Citizen Development. If at any moment you have been tempted to open applications development to the whole organization without the help and acknowledgment of your IT team, simply stop and understand what is Citizen Developer, how ideas need to be assessed, and how we need to count on IT. Be the channel and create the proper links to have all required assessments in place.

The Citizen Developer Practitioner (CDP) is actually CD for doers and actual developers, it provides the tools needed to efficiently create effective and scalable applications using low-code and no-code platforms.?It includes content related to the Ideation process, Suitability Assessment, Business Analysis, and Design or Enterprise risk requirements. Knowing them, a project manager can help teams and be sure the ideas in the team are feasible.

I share some assessments to screen any of your ideas. They can be downloaded for free:

?Suitability Scorecard (Download for free)

?Risk technical Grid. (Download for free)

?Environmental Check. (Download for free)

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A new operating model. The big picture, scalability, control and governance

In general, "citizen developers only partially automate the steps they take in a process, not the end-to-end business process outcome. Without a big-picture view, we fall victim to Constrain Theory and end up with suboptimizations that may or may not produce an actual ROI on the outcome desired". Snowflake.

We as project managers are used to relating, coordinating between departments, seeing outcomes, searching risks, managing them, and controlling budgets and schedules. We have already the pig picture engraved. Furthermore, if we have been involved in agile scaling processes, we are aware of how proper governance is essential to avoid person-centric developments, lack of visibility, or operational risks. We have to approach Citizen Development from an organizational perspective in order to avoid compromising the CIO and the whole IT department who, by the way, are the ones aware of rules, regulations, compliance, control... A project manager can help teams in this scenario, by becoming a CD advocate, presenting success stories, how they are linked to specific KPIs... reinforcing a sense of belonging and increasing the scope of our day-to-day as citizen developers.

Do you have ideas about how CD can help us in our professional growth? Please share your comments.