Citizen Devs Movement-rules have changed
Application development used to be supported in one company’s sector, with programming languages such as Java and C# serving as exclusive tools between the idea and the implementation.
The creation of a new app or workflow required the help of specialized staff as gatekeepers to the keys for accessing the solution.
Recent workflow platforms have changed this paradigm, extending the red carpet of development to non-IT employees known as citizen developers.
Why were citizen developers born?
The driving force behind this movement is the increased accessibility of development tools: companies are moving away from code-dependent development to open up application design to non-technical and non-technical users.
Driven by the proliferation of user-friendly visual tools, people are coming forward to create custom applications that previously required thousands of lines of code.
The clash between business needs and shadow IT has sparked the citizen developer movement. By sticking to approved tools and platforms, tech-savvy users can develop their own solutions faster while staying within the bounds of IT policies.
Low-code platforms unleash their power through these capabilities:
Visual design instead of writing code you go clicking on a canvas for building a flowchart.
Pre-built blocks and modules , these visual components substitute major control programming flows getting easier to build , visualize and communicate to where the automation flow goes.
Drag-and-drop with this feature you are able to easy move visual components on your canvas to link each other
Citizen developers can now build simple automations with user-friendly, low-code tools , without taking a certified long course on a specific programming language .
benefits flow to your organization
Citizen developers enable an “all hands on deck” mentality/thinking that can meet the challenges of improving and scaling your business.
The demand for top-notch customer experiences is evolving at a breakneck speed, and training citizen developers is one of the most popular ways to rise to the challenge.
Some you benefits you can get from this movement
Free your technical team to focus on ambitious, long-term, highly concentrated projects. Your IT team is well trained in their field, and your talents are better served by focusing on projects that require extensive technical expertise in software and infrastructure.
Low-code tools open the programming doors to citizen developers to lighten task queues and give IT more resources for more advanced challenges.
Grant a sense of ownership that can begin to grow in your staff members. Innovative team members are eager to drive new technologies that leave a lasting impression on your organization. It’s a feeling that has a direct impact on their motivation to do their best.
Empower the people on the frontline of your organization. Marketing and sales professionals often have the most interaction with your customers’ needs. They are aware of customer’s feelings and the difficulties they have in navigating/understanding your service offering. If you bring these people in as citizen developers, you can bridge the gap between your company’s services and the technology that drives user-experience improvements.
By “un-siloing” development, you can invite new employees to the tech table to help reach your digital goals at greater speeds.
This is why organizations are starting to turn to internal resources, true Citizen Developers, who have been trained to solve business problems rather than learn programming languages.
This is why organizations are starting to turn to internal resources, true Citizen Developers, who have been trained to solve business problems rather than learn programming languages.
But, has anyone got some second thoughts?
So many companies stand in place keeping away from such kinds of developers. Some of their concerns are
One problem organizations face with citizen developers is that they often have a limited field of knowledge and a myopic perspective on the problem they’re trying to solve.The average employee in the trenches can’t be expected to know and address all of the regulatory and compliance controls necessary when they’re developing a solution to a productivity problem. One way to solve this issue, or at least minimize it, is for IT to partner with citizen developers. Empowering citizen developers is preferable to dealing with shadow IT, but it’s still better for IT to work with citizen developers rather than just providing a set of tools and sending them off on their own.
When talking with IT departments about solving some problems, clashes may arise, due to the differences in cultures and education.
In one sense, IT may think that its company weight is vanishing.
IT jargon and vocabulary can lead the citizen developer to assume that IT is putting obstacles in their way to keep their department weight and control up.
The fact is, both have to learn to meet each other with knowledge and productive experiences.
The way is to understand in which part of the process to be solved, each one is more empowered by his or her natural or trained skills; meaning find the way to collaborate to reach the objective.
Often, the path for success is where IT can build the foundation of an application to ensure that it meets business goals and compliance regulations, then the citizen developers can put the finishing touches on it to create the solutions they need, and they are free to evolve that solution to meet future adjustments.
Co-creation and co-maintenance of processes are some concepts that are developed walking on this way .
You will soon meet a citizen developer 👀
Spreading development among company’s offices opens new doors of productivity, but technology is a constantly moving carrot. The power of low-code tools will continually improve, someday you will see some of your partners moving virtual objects with hands !?.
“No-code” tools will become simpler yet more powerful, bestowing even more capabilities upon your squadron of citizen developers. With your most talented team members itching to lead your organization into the future.
Now is the perfect time to prepare them with the tools they will need to expand the horizons of your business.
Inspired from ProcessMaker by Larissa Lewis 👋🏻
Inspired on article by Tony Bradley 👋🏻
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