Citizen Developers in 2020 – Year in Review #12

Rising Trend of Citizen Developers in 2020

In an earlier post of this Year in Review series, I had explained the PITSTOP approach. We need to take a pitstop break to get our bearings right in a F1 (Formula 1) race. Similarly, the pandemic can be compared to a pitstop in the race of our lives. Let us take this concept one step further and examine the cascading effect of adopting a pitstop mindset within an organization. In our case, our business users came forward to help build systems, acting as citizen developers in 2020. But, first things first. Let us understand the meaning of citizen developers.

Who is a Citizen Developer?

According to Gartner, a Citizen Developer is a business user who creates software applications to be used by others. The word citizen implies that the user does not belong to the IT department. Moreover, the user may not even be technically adept at building traditional IT systems. This phenomenon has shot into prominence only recently, although citizen developers have been around for many years.

I remember from as far back as 20 years that one of our colleagues had created tools for our use. These were Excel utilities to automate repetitive analysis that we did for clients. He also created PowerPoint tools to standardize and automate creation of slides. I am sure power users of Excel are familiar with such macros created using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications).

However, the above are very basic examples of citizen development from 20 years earlier only to introduce the concept. The platforms available today enable far more powerful citizen development. So, let us take a quick look at the enabling factors.

Enabling Factors

The cloud computing systems have come a long way in the last couple of decades. The early days saw the popularity of IaaS – Infrastructure as a Service. Consequently, organizations avoided blocking capital in IT infrastructure.

This was followed by a wave of Software as a Service (SaaS) applications. Now, users could just log in to a browser and start working on pre-configured software applications. These apps required minimal changes to the configuration. One could make minor changes to the settings and deploy the application. These models became very popular as it helped organizations go to market quickly and also allowed them to scale up.

The latest generation of Low Code Application Development Platforms have transformed the landscape. These platforms provide the business users the option to configure systems as per their requirements. However, unlike in the past, the applications don’t need extensive programming and yet, they provide immense flexibility.

This has spawned a new breed of citizen developers over the last few years.

The Rise of Citizen Developers During 2020

In addition to the application landscape explained above, a few factors exacerbated the rise of citizen developers in 2020. Let us look at a couple of these factors in more detail.

Project Management

Many organizations did not have systems that could seamlessly support an extended remote working and hybrid working model. They had to adapt during the year and migrate to native cloud based systems. This meant that they had to embark upon a comprehensive IT software development project.

The traditional software development lifecycle meant constituting a large project team. It would have involved getting business users, system analysts and developers to seamlessly interact with each other. Compared to complexities of projects with many moving parts, low code development platforms provided a viable alternative.

Time, Cost and Convenience

The other major factor that led to the rise of citizen developers during 2020 was the required speed of execution. The pandemic surprised everyone and did not give sufficient time to chalk out elaborate plans spread across few quarters.

Moreover, the economic consequences of the pandemic meant that costs had to be minimized. Most importantly, capital investments and big ticket projects were effectively ruled out for most organizations.

These factors of timelines, costs and convenience (of managing complex projects) led to the rise of citizen developers in 2020.

Scope of Citizen Development

There are several low-code application development platforms that are available off the shelf. Here is a list of the platforms that are listed in Gartner’s magic quadrant of Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms. These platforms allow organizations to implement a wide range of systems. Such applications can range all the way from automation of one-step workflows to mapping end to end processes. We can even create integrated systems, across the supply chain, using these platforms.

Outlook for 2021 and Beyond

As we saw in the rudimentary example in the beginning, citizen developers have been around for several decades. In the future, technology will make things simpler for the business users and the tribe of citizen developers will grow.

There was a time when business users required the services of a ‘computer operator’ or ‘typist’ to operate the computer. If you do not belong to the generation that saw this time, you would probably find this funny. You may even think that this is a contrived example. However, MS Office and its predecessors expanded the scope of the business user. I believe that low code application platforms have the same disruptive potential in the area of application development.

Creating the Future, Today

We don’t know if this will happen or when this will happen. However, I like to think of the future as a continuous variable, rather than a discrete variable. The lines between the past and the future keep getting blurred incrementally. The transition may never be complete, but movement is happening right now.

In a similar vein, progressive business users will continuously keep evolving over time. They will increase their comfort with technology and many of them will become citizen developers too. As this process unfolds, successful technocrats will also keep enhancing their business understanding.

The focus of the CIO / CTO (Chief Information / Technology Officer) and leadership will shift more towards security and sustainability. Governance will come to the forefront, as it should. Who knows, we may be looking at a new set of software development standards. And, maybe a new methodology for this new breed of development in the New Normal!

We don’t know when, and if, all this will finally happen. But, we need to keep moving and take the required steps today. Momentum, after all, is everything!

Year in Review 2020

Editor’s Note:

Citizen development is the need of the hour. On the one hand, the pandemic needed the world to adopt digitalization aggressively. On the other hand, implementing IT projects remotely is a challenge. Read about the Featured Snippet on Google from this article at the FTEM Success Story.

About The Author

Rajiv Maheshwari is a business and start-up advisor, and the co-founder of From The Experts Mouth. He is a management professional with over 25 years of experience, and worked as CEO for a decade, and in leadership roles with NYSE listed companies such as Accenture and WNS.

He is a Chartered Accountant and MBA (Director’s Merit List from IIM Bangalore) and an autodidact, who is on the path of self-directed life long learning and sharing. He is a thought leader, author and keynote speaker and has developed several frameworks to bridge the gap between academia and industry.