Why A Low Code Citizen Developer Programme Make Sense For Your Payments or Finance Team

Anyone paying close attention to technology trends, will have noticed the buzz around low-code software. Low-code technology development involves using visual interfaces and pre-built components rather than handwriting code. This market is expanding at an unprecedented rate. The low code platform market is expected to be worth $65bn by 2027 up from $12bn in 2020. But that number accounts for just the standalone low code tools. The reality is much bigger. Low code is being baked into software everywhere, and frequently now AI assisted. Yes Low Code is eating software. Low code is being used to both accelerate software development and to integrate and automate workflows between applications and particularly between the plethora of SaaS platforms that have spread across organisations.

Low code is very much a force in the payments industry too. Whether you look at the payments domain through a horizontal lens, as part of a finance or internal treasury function, or through a vertical lens, as part of the BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) industry, you will see accelerating rates of low code adoption. This should come as no surprise given the characteristics of payments: highly data-intensive, huge volumes of transaction processing, increasingly digital, yet with high dependency on back office operational activities where manual steps still prevail.

In this second post of the series, the first one is here, I explore four topics: the business pressures that have led to a surge in low-code adoption, the rising problem of shadow IT, the emergence of Citizen Developer programmes as a solution, and finally why companies are setting up Centre of Excellence (COE) or some kind of centralised team or hub tasked to team to manage Citizen Developer programmes.

Surge In Low-Code Adoption

In 2014, Forrester Research coined the term "Low-Code Development" to describe software tools with visual user interfaces as an alternative to traditional handwritten code. Low-code adoption has gained substantial momentum, with a reported 50% year-over-year growth rate reported by Forrester Research. But why has the adoption of low-code technology surged in recent years? Let’s look at some of the key factors behind the trend.

• Cloud: The shift towards cloud computing has reshaped software utilisation, emphasising the importance of integration and connectivity between various applications to create cohesive systems. Low-code tools emerged to bridge gaps between multiple apps and systems, enabling organisations to adapt quickly in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.
• COVID: The pandemic accelerated the urgency for digital transformation and workflow automation and prompted employees and their organisations to turn to easy to learn no or low-code tools in order to create digital solutions needed for effective remote working.
• Agility: the ability to move quickly with technology has become a major competitive advantage. Low-code dramatically accelerates idea-to-solution and time to value timelines.
• Skills shortage: internal IT teams face massive challenges and in particular the fast-paced evolution of technology outstrips the availability of skilled IT professionals. Low/no code tools have emerged as a solution, empowering internal IT teams to upgrade their skills. They are intuitive and quick to learn with shallow learning curves. IT professionals can swiftly get the hang of them resulting in a quick adoption rate and transforming the productivity levels of existing IT teams.
• Macroeconomics: In the current economic climate, and frankly even before, many organisations have not been able to afford the investment required to expand their IT teams. Whilst the demand for technology continues to grow, IT teams staffing levels have often remain more static, prompting IT leaders to seek new ways to enhance their existing teams' efficiency and do more with less. Low-code tools provide an appealing solution to scale output at a lower cost.

Rise of Shadow IT and Citizen development

In light of the above forces, so called Shadow IT has emerged as a major problem for IT departments. Shadow IT are software services and applications developed and used across the organisation without IT department knowledge or consent. This phenomenon has risen sharply due to the imbalance between business needs and technology resources, leading to employees seeking solutions independently. Shadow IT is problem because unsupported software leads to proliferation of potentially unknown business risks, including data security and software vulnerabilities.?

The threat of shadow IT is not a new topic. For years, we have known that employees and business units alike bypass IT departments utilize to get their job done. Cloud based SaaS services has exacerbated the situation.

Back in 2016, Cisco reported that 80% of end users use software not cleared by IT, and only 8% of all enterprises actually know the scope of shadow IT within their organisation.

But on the flip side, shadow IT could offer some interesting benefits. Assuming the risks could be managed and mitigated, it could increase employee productivity and overall familiarity with cloud computing, and more importantly, in the absence of sufficient software developers, it could free up pro-IT resources to focus on higher priority mission critical projects.?

The concept of Citizen Development has emerged as such a solution. The idea is harness the strengths of shadow IT while minimising risks. Citizen Development encourages non-IT employees to contribute to the software development process using IT-sanctioned low-code/no-code tools. These citizen developers build custom solutions to everyday business problems without coding knowledge, leveraging low-code/no-code drag-and-drop interfaces and predefined modules.

Citizen Development has served to further strengthen the relevance of low code platforms as businesses seek to embrace ‘shadow IT’ and more formally collaborate with business teams to develop technology with low code platforms.?

Citizen Developer Programmes and Centre of Excellence (COE)

To effectively leverage citizen development and low-code technology, businesses are starting to establish formal Citizen Developer Programmes central to which is a Citizen Developer Centre of Excellence (COE) or some kind of centralised team or hub that is tasked with championing, deploying, and managing Citizen Developer programmes. This is a cross functional team and depending on the emphasis will either sit within a business team or be part of an IT department. A CofE typically has 5 goals:

1.???? Strategy & leadership: To develop LC strategy, thought leadership and direction including fostering a collaborative environment between citizen developers and IT.

2.???? LC tools: To evaluate and selects platforms and tools, provides testing, and maintains a repository of developer resources.

3.???? Guardrails: Set standards, methodologies and a unified governance framework that ensures consistency and security standards that minimize risk.

4.???? Training: To act as a centralised hub for training and shared learning, best practices, guidance and support.

5.???? Monitoring: To measure, monitor and benchmark quality of service, and to implement access controls and security.

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Next Up

As mentioned at the start of this post, low code is very much a force in the payments industry. The next post in this series will begin to take a closer look at the payment’s domain through a horizontal lens and at specific use cases across payments, treasury and the broader finance function.

Do feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments on this topic.

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