Say "no" to Citizen Development purism

Citizen Development can be somewhat of an enigma, and there is no official law that states what it is. Truth be told, at Betty Blocks, it’s also hard to stay continuously aligned with what it really is.

Some people are approaching it from an angle that I call Citizen Development purism.

Purism: “Only if I give this very inexperienced person a low-code platform and enable him/her to build an application without any help will we have successfully implemented Citizen Development in our organization.”

Citizen who?

You see, sometimes it helps to exaggerate because now I don't need to explain that this is not how it works. The problem with Citizen Development starts with the first word: ‘citizen.’ I have experienced total chaos when talking about citizen development with an IT manager at a municipality. “You want to help the citizens of my municipality build apps? Why would we want to do that?" Just another day in the life of a Citizen Development evangelist like me.?

Let’s first focus on the definition of Citizen Development, and in 2024, we turn to ChatGPT.

[Prompt] Give me the definition of Citizen development. No yapping        

Mind the ‘no yapping’ and see how much of a ChatGTP pro I am ??

Citizen development refers to the process of creating software applications or digital solutions by individuals who are not professional developers. These individuals, often employees within an organization, use low-code or no-code platforms to build applications to address specific business needs without extensive coding knowledge or expertise.

Well, that didn’t bring us much...?

Here, we read again that it’s about “individuals who are not professional developers.” In my humble opinion, this is where it goes wrong.?

Citizen Developers VS Citizen Development

There is Citizen Development, and there is a Citizen Developer, where the latter is a role. For a Citizen Developer, we all understand that it’s an “individual who is not a professional developer.”?

However, Citizen Development is an enterprise program. It is a program where an organization enables and encourages teams and individuals outside the IT department to move from problem owners to problem solvers by building applications.

The ChatGPT definition mentioned earlier uses the word process, where ‘process’ = ‘program.’

You see, it’s not about a role; it’s about the program that you start. In my previous article, we looked at the differences between low-code platforms. You need low-code for Citizen Development when you acknowledge that, as an organization, you need to build multiple applications while staying agile because, after the first three or so couple of apps, you don’t know what apps four, five, and six will look like.?

Building apps at scale

With low-code for Citizen Development, you’re moving to building apps at scale. You must acknowledge that you can’t build all those apps inside the IT department, for a variety of reasons.

Why most organizations need to make this move is a topic for a next blog article. But assuming that you agree that every company is a software company today, have you already figured out how to get there?

Let’s stay away from Citizen Development purism. It’s not only about getting inexperienced people to build apps; it’s more about how to get your organization to create application development capabilities.

Building capabilities is not something that can be achieved by building one app. It’s a step-by-step process with several maturity stages:

1. Experiment by building a first app with a low-code platform with an external partner
2. Build a second app with a low-code platform with internal resources
3. Build more apps with a delegate from the business in your development team
4. Introduce an ideation process where everyone can submit ideas
5. Have an inexperienced person build an application
6. Setup a dedicated Fusion Team to build several apps
7. Introduce a Citizen Development Centre of Excellence
8. And so on...

You get to live and learn

It’s up to you to decide where you want to start. In the end, it’s about the destination and not where you start. There is no right or wrong way to look at Citizen Development, except when you look at it from purism ??