The Rise of Citizen Developers: Democratizing App Creation with Low-Code and No-Code
The business sector has been deeply becoming involved in all aspects of life. Truthfully speaking, as good as this sounds for the acceleration it brings into communities, some bottlenecks started to flow to the surface and it all had to do with the lack of efficient backup from the IT teams in companies. This isn’t something that businesses did not expect, but perhaps, something that they didn’t see coming this soon. Thus, this brought the need to bring a fast convenient solution to fill the gaps from growing bigger and ultimately come to the conclusion to bring the Business and IT sectors together as one to create a novice role that solves this dilemma that is, Citizens Developers.
What Does a “Citizen Developer” Stand For?
Citizen developers are employees who create and build applications, work on business development platforms, and handle technical tasks previously managed by IT experts through low-code to no-code methods. This means they don’t necessarily code and build these applications from scratch as they rely on some assisting tools and platforms to help achieve this, similar to that of Maestro Blocks’. The determining factor to bear in mind here is that, unlike IT department specialists, these citizen developers need to have a business background to know how to combine both worlds together and create a new one.
What Does it Solve?
The sole purpose of creating this role was to lessen the burden the IT departments had to suffer, the world of business is going digital after all, but this also brings more challenges to the game to stay up to date with each trend and meet the needs of the business and customers’ requirements. And while you might be thinking why not simply bring more developers and solve this issue, we’ll tell you why this doesn’t always work. Hiring professional developers means a higher cost for businesses to cover, not only that, but it does also consume time on top of the fact that some tasks do require knowledge and a skill set of both, business and IT. So, they decided why not train competent employees that we already have, have the potential, and know how our work goes and enable them with basic technical skills this job requires to take some of the load off of the IT department’s shoulders. And that’s what we have come to indeed.
How to Make it Happen?
Now that the issues have been figured out, what remains is knowing how to achieve that as they’re not professionals after all. Lucky for all, the low-code to the no-code trend was already spreading big and wide everywhere and it has been specifically curated to address these business struggles in particular. Hence, by emerging these smart solutions as part of the business growth plan, businesses noticed a drastic change in numbers and outcomes as they were able to handle more tasks, close more projects, and let the IT professionals focus more on the essentials by letting these citizen developers take care of what they can through such platforms like the Maestro Blocks Platform. This ultimately resulted in higher productivity by adopting a solution that is both time and cost-saving.
What Does it Take to Become a Citizen Developer?
We have come to terms now that citizen developers help automate business processes and workflows, but the question is who can be a citizen developer? The answer is anyone. This term is still a novice and you won’t find college-certified degrees with it, because it’s still a growing term and those who took it as a job did sufficient self-studying to understand what they’re getting into. It’s true that with smart platforms like Maestro Blocks, you get to work with drag-and-drop features, user-friendly tools, graphical interfaces, and more but if you can’t master the business part where you actually have to know the goal of why you’re using it and what to use it for, you might end up wasting more time and resources instead of saving. And this is what smart businesses understand and try to avoid by structuring a well-studied plan to train their employees with the specific skills they need to achieve and equip them with the proper tools, courses, and materials needed. In conclusion, if you wanted to become a citizen developer, be prepared for the extra miles you’ll have to walk and consider having some of these skills for starters:
- Basic Digital Skills.
- Strong Will to Learn.
- Diving into Different Niches to Build Yours.
- Strong Spirit to Overcome Obstacles.
- Working in A Fast-Paced Field.
- Patience and Ability to Negotiate and Communicate Clearly.
Reasons Companies are Moving Towards Citizen Development
Businesses who have joined early in the game to adopt low-code to no-code methods in their strategies realized what it takes to be digitally present while working out less costly solutions. So, we can say that the primary reason is to save costs and cut down on the resources used. In addition, it provides a better delegation of task roles for the IT teams, as it spares other departments from the usual hindrances they have to face during their work progress over some tasks that haven’t been achieved due to the fact that the IT team is overloaded with work that never seems to end. This balance citizen developer bring allows businesses to adapt faster to the changes in the market and get higher customer satisfaction rates as well, which empowers them with more business agility as a result.
Shadow IT
Due to the miscommunication between the IT department and other departments inside the same company, some employees found themselves falling behind in tasks they need to handle and get done as they were not getting the backup and support, they need from the IT team. Hence, they started to do IT Shadowing which basically refers to using methods or tools of work that hasn’t been permitted by the IT department. While this isn’t really a bad thing because it usually does help get things done faster, it created other potential risks like exposing the business’s sensitive data to untrusted networks, platforms, or tools. Hence, having citizen developers has solved this problem to a certain limit as it helped organizes the roles, tasks, tools, and platforms to be used so those with little to no technical background are able to carry out their daily tasks without suffering from down time or risking the company’s data due to poor judgment of what tools to use to finish projects and meet customers’ needs just because they lack the proper direction. Citizen Development puts everything in its right place without moving, replacing, or giving up on anyone.
Conclusion
Involving citizen developers in the Business digital transformation plan does not delete the roles professional developers still handle, if anything, it assists them to conduct the work process required without suffering from late deadlines or piled up work that needs their approval or else it’ll remain on hold. And for smaller-sized companies where not many experienced-tech hands are needed, the choice of having a citizen developer instead seems wiser and more convenient to have. If you’re willing to start with your citizen development journey, make sure to check the Maestro Blocks Platform to explore the amazing options waiting for you and have an easy start with no complexities.
