Citizen Development Insights

By Mario Trentim

Agile and Citizen Development

In this article, I will guide you through a journey that combines agility and citizen development. Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity add up to the VUCA world, posing new challenges to the organizations. As globalization and transformations changed the outside world, organizations embraced agile practices to adapt.

More recently, the next generation of business evolved into Brittleness, Anxiety, Nonlinearity, and Incomprehensibility, resulting in the new BANI world.

Combining VUCA and BANI means a whole new playing field and Agile frameworks like Scrum are not enough to build agile organizations.

The Agile Revolution

In a previous article, I explained the early days of project management. At that time, most organizations operated in models from the 19^th century, typically hierarchical and prescriptive. It was a time when the change was slow. Consequently, organizations had plenty of time and resources to go for waterfall approaches. For example, if you compare NASA and SpaceX, you will find two great organizations with very different methods.

I am not advocating that one is better than the other. The context is different, and we have a new project environment, innovations in technology and management, and the world changed. NASA started with traditional approaches to management and project management, and it evolved from there. SpaceX started with agile methods, flexible with scope, focusing on speed in development and lean approaches.

When I go back to the Agile Manifesto, it looks to me that agile approaches were the answer to external changes. Engaging with stakeholders and delivering working products (or software) needed a new way of work to respond to change. Without the waterfall constraints, teams and organizations were suddenly free to experiment, learn, and co-create value with stakeholders to co-create value.

The Agile Revolution emphasized

adaptive versus predictive.

A decade ago, Jurgen Appelo published the book Management 3.0, sharing insights grounded in modern complex systems theory to help in scaling and advancing agile management. In summary, management 1.0 describes scientific management approaches from the 19^th century, typically hierarchical and prescriptive. As organizations evolved, management 2.0 evolved to objectives and key results, meritocracy, and organizational alignment around business models. Finally, management 3.0 advocates that autonomous teams, distributed, hybrid, and virtual, need a different environment to thrive.

Agile is not the fastest way anymore.

VUCA and BANI mentioned before are not buzzwords. These are attempts to make sense of the rapid pace of changes and the digital transformation turmoil accelerated by the 2020 pandemic. The Cynefin Framework, created by Snowden and Boone, is a sense-making framework to help us in navigating a variety of situations to make decisions.

Figure 1 – Cynefin framework (Wikipedia.org)

If we were better equipped to deal with external changes because of agile approaches, Cynefin framework, and more, it all changed when internal changes surpassed external changes. 2020 will be remembered as the year of hyper-agility.

Citizen Development

Think for a moment that very few organizations were prepared for the full-time remote work. Even agile approaches had to be reinvented because you cannot use daily meetings and information radiators as you did in a physical environment.

Although there was a significant number of remote workers in the past, organizations were focused on in-person first work. That means organizational structures, organizational architecture, communications, decision-making, and more assumed that we had physical spaces, headquarters, and in-person work for the things that were “important.”

In other work, most people working from home were even part-time employees, freelancers, outsourced workers. Full-time employees were not working from home permanently. Remote work has always been peripheral to in-person work until the pandemic.

Because of the pandemic, we had no choice but to embrace remote work. A remote-first organization needs to decentralize decisions to a myriad of distributed teams.

Figure 2 – Disciplined Agile

While Disciplined Agile provides principles, guidelines, and a complete toolkit for organizations to create their Way of Work, Citizen Development enables these organizations to build applications to support their work, embedding intellectual property from flexible and adaptable processes into low-code platforms with governance and security.

Figure 3 – Citizen development and technology abstraction

Hyper-agility is the new normal as a result of the digital transformation accelerated because of the 2020 pandemic. To understand the implications of hyper-agility, think for a moment about your organization´s business model, capabilities, and systems. Imagine you work for a large manufacturer. In the past, you would need a couple of months to go through the cascade of choices (Figure 4) or any other strategic planning approach. Once you reviewed and prioritized a roadmap of initiatives, it would take even more time to build or rethink the capabilities, developing and implementing new scalable systems.

Figure 4 – Playing to Win (Lafley and Martin, 2013)

Right now, citizen development allows you to do the same job in weeks. You can check the successful case studies here, for example. Hyper-agility means that organizations have now to change from the inside. Adapting to the external context is not enough.

Citizen development allows you to learn, experiment, innovate, build, deploy, and service new applications as you discover new ways of work and value streams with the support and help of business users and stakeholders.

Let me know how your organization is embracing Citizen Development in the comments below.

This is my third and final blog documenting the start of my journey through learning about citizen development and LCNC platforms.
 
At the end of my last blog, I set myself a goal to create a functioning app of my choosing by using everything that I learned that previous month.

I decided to use Microsoft PowerApps as my platform as it stood out to me as one of the better platforms on the market and had an amazing set of online learning modules.

What I built
The app I decided to build was simple, matching my basic skill set at the time; since I am currently in the construction industry, I wanted something to document customer details, contractor details, job details and have relationships between all of them so they could be cross-referenced within the app.

This would make for a good first step in removing the need for keeping stacks of papers about in folders that document all aspects of each ongoing job. Keeping paper copies and noting down outgoings on a small job may be convenient in itself, but it soon becomes a hassle when the job is nine months long and the outgoings tip over the £100,000 mark.

That is the exact reason I started constructing this app; it’s a step in the direction of becoming paperless, making life easy when there’s lots of receipts and invoices from contractors to keep a hold of.

So, with my goal in sight, I opened PowerApps and got started.

Creating the app
Through my learning process, I discovered that getting the app to look appealing and be visually consistent could pose to be a tedious task, at least if I didn't create a template page first! So that's the first thing I did—I built a template page that I could duplicate each time I wanted a new page.

 
That was the first page I created for the app! A simplistic design made for functionality, it has the company name section, a home button, the company logo (top right) and the navigation buttons to take you to each of the pages in the app.
 
After that, I hit the duplicate button a few times, linked them all together so that the navigation buttons functioned as intended, and voila! My base app was born.
 
Getting data
The next step was to get some data to work with. I could have used something simple such as an Excel spreadsheet and imported it into the app, but I didn't like that idea. I liked the idea of Microsoft's own data hosting service. Microsoft Dataverse is a cloud-hosted data service that lets you securely store and manage your business data, perfect for what I wanted.

I wanted to start by making the Customer portion of my app as it seemed by far the simplest, requiring only basic data such as a name, address and contact number, perfect since this was my first time attempting this and didn't want to overwhelm myself just yet.
 
Creating the first page
So, with a template in hand and a data table created in Dataverse, I was ready to make the first "real" page of my app.

I took what I learnt from the learning modules and got to work.

 
There it is, my first functioning page.

From the screenshot, you can see the table containing some example customers and their data, with a delete key for each row (which contains a pop-up message to confirm).

The little arrow on each row takes you to a screen that allows you to edit the contact information for each row; there is a search field that allows you to filter the customer table to return records that match what you type; and of course there is a button labelled "New" that navigates to a screen that allows you to create a new record.

You may have noticed that the table is also in alphabetical order. I did this by using a function called "SortByColumns."

Although the app is looking pretty basic at this point, I was nevertheless happy with the functionality.
 
Creating the rest of the app
So, now I have a template and a working Customer page, which is a great start and filled me with confidence in my ability to create apps within PowerApps—at least until I begun making the Contractor and Job pages, which proved to be just a little more difficult than I has anticipated.

Why was it more difficult? Well it had a lot more—and more complex—fields to manage.

The customer table was a walk in the park. It needs name, address and contact info data, which is all basic text and is static; nothing changes after the data has been input.

The jobs and contractor tables, however, are a different story. You need a whole bunch of new fields with dynamic data and a robust relationship so they can be cross-referenced throughout the app. Each contractor needed the same simple fields as the customer needs such as the name and contact information, but also fields such as their hourly rate and the hours they worked on a job (plus a field to calculate the sum of the hourly rate and hours worked to give the total salary).

The job table also needs to reference the customer that the job is being done for, and also list each contractor (including the hours worked and amount payable) that has been assigned hours on the job, plus list the date of the job and location and have all of the information updated and visible to the user at all times.

Yes, I did get everything functioning in the end, and the solutions seem simple now that I've figured them out. But go back in time a couple of weeks when I first started making the app, and it was a lot of trial and error whilst trying to compose a working function that was any more complex than four words long.

Yes, it was difficult. There were times that I spent hours pulling my hair out over functions not working and giving error messages, only to find out I put a comma in the wrong place (yes, this happened many times), but it was a great way to push my skill set and force myself to learn and overcome obstacles.
 
Showcase
So, I finished the app (at least for now) and got it looking and functioning somewhat how I envisioned it. Here’s a screenshots for you...

 
Welcome to the contractor page!

Again, you have the list of contractors with a search bar to filter the data, a delete button, new button and I added that special red dollar symbol to show which of the contractors had outstanding payments.

When you select a contractor from the list, it highlights the selection in a slightly different shade of grey to show it has been selected (although this may change in the future as it's almost unnoticeable). The main thing to note is the table that pops up referencing the selection you make to showcase the list of jobs that they are related to and how many hours that have done on said job:

 
Last but definitely not least is the Jobs page. You'll notice all the similarities with the previous pages with the sorting and showcasing of the contractors referenced in the selected job, along with some additional calculated fiends at the bottom right to show what the sum end total of the costs and hours are.

Most of the magic here is with the Job details page, which is accessed by clicking the arrow on the job you wish to view. Let me show you the details for the example job "Garden renovation"...

 
There you have it—by far the most time-consuming part of this build.

There are lots of relationships, references and calculations on this page, which is the sole reason it took the most time. But it was also the most fun to design and build, and was also the biggest learning curve for myself.

Here you see a reference to the Job you have chosen. You can assign a contractor to the Job and input the start date (default to the job start date). After that, you look to the right and see the entire list of contractors that are working on the selected job and whether they have been paid yet or not.
 
What’s my experience in using the app?
Overall, the user experience is great. The app has been easy to use thanks to its simple design, and it only takes a few minutes to add or edit a job. However, it does seem to have more use when it comes to larger scale jobs as opposed to small ones.

Imagine you contract three people to carry out various work on a job. One sends you the invoice for their labour via email, one writes out a physical copy in their invoice book and hands it to you personally, and the third only does two hours of work so tells you to add it to the tab and pay at the end of the month.

Jobs like those aren’t too difficult to keep track of, although it may seem a mess at times with receipts and invoices coming from all directions. They typically get paid off pretty quick and can be forgotten about. However, it’s the larger-scale jobs that need some help, the jobs where one person will do that two hours of work but then come back four days later and do another eight hours, then again the next week.

You can have multiple people doing hours such as that on a job that’s six, seven or 12 months long, so having some sort of app to keep a track of those jobs will save time and keep everything organised. With the tap of a button, you will able to see who is working on what job—and whether they have been paid or not. It's a great first step to becoming paperless and more efficient.

What's next?
After actually building my first functioning app, I do feel a lot more confident in my ability to create something. The journey wasn't as difficult as I thought it might have been, although I did struggle to get parts to function as I wanted them to at times. All I needed to do when that happened was take a break and look at someone else's app to see how they overcame a similar obstacle and try relate it back to my own scenario.

Next, I will aim to revise and hone my skills enough to take the PL-400 Microsoft power platform developer certification exam. This will prove that I have the necessary skills to work with the power platform and give me a certification to show that.

As for my next app? I'm not sure yet...maybe I should try something more technical to push my skills further, or even use what I learn to further improve my current app.
 
Over to you
What are your thoughts and feelings on my first app? I'd love to hear your feedback so that I can learn to improve on my next project.

What should I build next to further test my skills and abilities?

Don't hesitate to message me if you have any questions about Citizen Development or PowerApps, I'd love to help out.

ACME Corporation is an involved, multiple-unit business and their IT division is always overwhelmed by priorities. The organisation has a Corporate Social Responsibility division, which wishes to build an app for philanthropic purposes. The CEO of ACME has mandated that the COO oversee development of such an app within 6 months. After an initial idea of building an aggregator for Donors,  the COO has pivoted to a different idea, and has the following conversation with the CEO.

COO: We’ve finally got it! We have plans to develop an app that’ll help realize our ambitions for the CSR division.

CEO: That is great news. Is this the same one you were working on? The Donor Network Aggregator?

COO: Actually, no. We could not figure out the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) for Donor Network Aggregator, as it is a little complicated, and we lack the necessary domain knowledge.

CEO: Oh I see. Can you say more? What was complicated about it?

COO: Well, we need to offer too many parameters as part of the MVP to be useful, and therefore, the schedule/cost are not within our budget. Also it needs more domain expertise, which we lack currently.

CEO: Did you use Ideation 2.0 of Citizen Developer as we discussed last time?

COO: Yes. We did. Thanks to our CDP (Citizen Developer Practitioner) for her excellent support in this.

CDP: As per the Ideation Board Template, we identified that this app would fail unless we provide intensive training to the user & it had support for more expressive queries and constraints. We used one of Ideation 2.0 methods, Really Round Robin (R-R-R). It was a really great learning experience, but the end decision is to put the idea on the back-burner.

CEO: Got it! So what have you been working on since? How’s it been going?

COO: Originally, we had great difficulty in convincing our associates on Citizen Developer (CD) concepts initially, but after this exercise, everyone is ready to start development of our new app using CD. One of them told me that “Low Code, No Code (LCNC) is like magic.” We’ve benefited greatly from CD Canvas on the whole!

CEO: Good, so what is your new mobile app all about? Have you named it? What’s the market potential? Growth opportunity and uniqueness? What does the MVP look like? How are our users going to realize the value?

COO: Yes, we did. We think this has significant market potential, and we’re really excited about being the first organisation to use it as part of the CSR division. We’ve named it D2P2L. It’s an app connecting Donors, Doctors, Patients, Pharmacists & Logistics. We hope you like the name.

While we applied conventional mode to evaluate, we used CD’s concepts and framework to strengthen our stand.

CDP: As per the CD framework:

• Vision: To connect Donors, Doctors, Patients, Pharmacist and logistics providers under virtual umbrella to extend their offers/ services
• Target group: Non-insured patients who can’t afford to buy medicines. As you well know, this is especially crucial during this pandemic.
• Need: Mobile, responsive, and with good UX/UI
• Product: A customised solution provider to connect Donors, Doctors, Patients, Pharmacist, and Logistics providers to achieve our business goal
• Business Goal: Provide patients with access to life-saving medication, while providing ways for Donors to directly connect with their beneficiaries

CEO: I see that you used PMI’s Vision board template and it is easy for anyone to visualize the end products/benefits: I am proud of you and your team. Can you explain more about D2P2L?

COO: The registered Patients who have no insurance & can’t afford to buy medicines, can submit their medicine requests, as prescribed by the Doctors. This will be verified by the system, and map the request with registered donors, who can step-in and fund these requests. Then, the prescription will be forwarded to registered Pharmacists to deliver the medicines to the beneficiary through the authorised Logistic service provider. Donors are periodically updated on the health of the patients by Doctors through our system. And ultimately, our Corporate Social Responsibilities division will build and operate an extremely important platform to help ailing patients around the world.

CEO: Good. What about other success parameters?

COO: The uniqueness is we provide the comprehensiveness of our end-to-end solutions, anywhere, everywhere, & on any gadget. The MVP includes Login In screen, Donor tab, Doctor Tab, Patient tab,  Pharmacist Tab, Logistic tab, an integration with a payment gateway, Feedback & Dashboard. The success factor is that all links should work very effectively and transactions should get completed seamlessly.

CEO: This is really great!

COO: As you know, we will be running Ideation 2.0 throughout the development and we will be applying LCNC concepts of CD. Our Citizen DeveloperAdvocate will guide us to realise MVP faster.

CDP: I am happy to offer my guidance. There are 3 roles identified in CD as of now, namely: CD Practitioner, Business Architects (responsible for managing compliance) and CD Strategist (responsible for the operating environment who is part of the Senior Management team).

I will be the CD practitioner for this project. The CD process will offer benefits like cost effectiveness, reduce IT backlog, and further it enables disruptive technology without technical knowledge. With the support of IT management, we can build this application without coding knowledge. Our UI/UX experts take care of multi-response user experience which is more critical for our success.

We need to study whether the D2P2L project is a good fit under the purview of CD. This project can be delivered under Hyper Agile SDLC, Ideation 2.0 and Suitability Assessment. Given that our project is so nascent, and that you have commenced Ideation 2.0, you can follow Hyper Agile life cycle which will help you to achieve your MVP faster. We will get regular feedback and we will be agile during minor pivots while progressing on the project. CD helps you being Agile and doing Agile. It is similar to being ‘good’ & doing ‘good’.

Next, we need to address Capability development, through which we address Business Analysis & Design, Enterprise Risk Requirements and Application Development.

May I request that our team read through ‘Citizen Developer - The Handbook for creators and Changemakers’ by PMI? It is a really useful read.

We can meet up once a week and discuss the progress of your project.

COO: Thanks, CDP. We have made our initial estimates, and it will take a minimum of 6 months and cost USD 65,000 to complete my POC & MVP. At the end of 6 months, we will swim or sink. We need your help in this angel funding.

CEO:  The budget is approved, but let’s make sure that the CDP will help our squad develop the MVP faster. Any savings in the budget will be given as incentives to our team.

CDP:  Thanks for including me in the conversation. We will complete it faster, thanks to LCNC and these incentives.

A month after this conversation, the MVP of www.d2p2l.com is ready and currently being beta-tested by business owners. The meeting was held with squad and here are the key discussion points:    

 Squad 1: “Great feeling: we never thought  we would complete a POC and MVP so fast without knowledge of coding. We were worried about security vulnerability and performance. But thankfully, it was handled out of the box by the CD tool. We got our MVP within a month and at half the cost.”

Squad 2:  “The role of CD Practitioner is very crucial and we are so happy we had her support. We were able to do application development with Data Model, Back end & Front end design.”

CDP:  “We all liked CD Canvas, where Product delivery and Capability Development played a major role. In CD, Maturity Model, we are successful in Discovery and Experimentation. We need to adopt, scale and Innovate.

COO:  “What I like is our flexibility throughout the development and the UX/UI team could make all preparations by ourselves. The role of IT was very minimal in our case, and the CD tool was self-explanatory and easy to use and adopt.”

CEO:  “Citizen Developer has really helped us here. We really should commit to using it for future development too. In that case, we need to understand the Manage and Lead aspect of CD and CD Maturity Model as well. Before that, let us enjoy our incentives and celebrate our success!”

By Mario Trentim

Citizen development is not something that´s far out in the future. We now live in an era of hyper-agility that demands citizen development skills to innovate, and the modern workplace and digital businesses require cultivating citizen development to maximize digital dexterity.

Citizen developers are in high demand in all

professions and roles.

Figure 1 – Anyone can be a developer (Gartner, 2019)

Although, in theory, anyone can become a citizen developer (Figure 1), it is not easy to become a successful citizen developer. In a previous article, I laid out five tips to QuickStart your citizen development career. And in this article, I would like to highlight the benefits of certifications to establish your professional credibility and to guide you on best practices.

How can you stand out in the job market as

a professional citizen developer?

Professional Developer vs Citizen Developer

. Before I describe citizen development certificates and credentials, it is important to highlight the major career differences between a citizen developer and a professional developer:

-          Professional Developer: IT professionals and software developers who have the skills, knowledge, and expertise to create and maintain software created for commercial purposes.

-          Citizen Developer: non-IT professionals who are capable of building applications without coding knowledge, but usually with the support of IT.

A typical career path for a software developer may start with database, application services, software development lifecycle, coding skills, and a variety of technologies. A professional developer might become a technical leader, software architect, CIO (Chief Information Officer) or CTO (Chief Technology Officer).

Figure 2 – Software developer learning paths (LinkedIn Learning)

What about Citizen Developers?

What does a CD career path look like?

The Project Economy articulates how work has changed for individuals and organizations. According to PMI´s research, the future of work will be based more on specific projects than roles, meaning change-makers are anywhere in all industries and professions. On top of that, digital transformation is everywhere from products and services to new technologies, new business models, and new ways of work. Consequently, citizen development as a life skill applies to all of us.

Learning a visual interface drag-and-drop system to connect components in a meaningful order to create an application without writing any code is not enough. You have to acquire the skillset to see the world through new lens, understanding business needs through the hyper-agile SDLC (Doing and the Management of Doing).

Figure 3 – PMI Citizen Development framework.

To become a successful citizen developer, you must understand the citizen development framework (Figure 2), as I explained in previous articles. You can take the official course at https://www.pmi.org/citizen-developer and showcase your certificate of completion on your resume. The next step is to get certified.

Get a Certification, and Get Ahead

A certification increases your earning potential and employability. You can also access community involvement benefits by getting a certification.

Figure 4 – PMI CD product descriptions and certifications.

Our professions are rapidly evolving, citizen development will upskill your career, enabling you to create low-code applications. That means you can leverage your competencies and experience to achieve more through the use of technology. Take these examples:

-          Finance: as a citizen developer, you may solve a variety of problems by developing a reimbursement app or automated approvals based on business rules;

-          Health Care: as a citizen developer, you may identify opportunities to improve services by adopting paperless technology and real time dashboards;

-          Marketing: as a citizen developer, you may develop applications to improve customer experience, customer service, and more;

-          Project Management: as a citizen developer, you may build a variety of applications to help you updating tasks, manage information and documents, and more;

-          Logistics: as a citizen developer, you may find ways to become more productive by using artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning;

-          Engineering: as a citizen developer, you may combine Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and more to build low-code applications and improve your organization´s competitiveness.

The common story among the examples above is that they use a proven framework to move from the project concept to a minimum viable product. Hyper-agility is the next big thing for all organizations and professionals. And, by getting certified, you get ahead. Visit https://www.pmi.org/citizen-developer and stay tuned.

Join the conversation. Let me know your thoughts on the comments below. 

Do you prefer listening to a Podcast? Check out the PMOCast here.

This post is the fourth in a series introducing you to elements on the PMI Citizen Development Canvas (see image below). These posts are designed to inspire you, share tips and insight, and further your knowledge and experience. I welcome your questions and encourage you to share your own stories.

In the last post, I introduced you to Business Analysis and Design. In this post, I will introduce you to Enterprise Risk Requirements. 

Enterprise Risk Requirements is the component in the PMI Citizen Development Canvas that refers to functional and non-functional requirements within citizen development projects. It is also the area where the Citizen Developer identifies and manages other inherent project risks including stakeholder and communication risks. 

In this blog, I am going to focus on stakeholder risk and the importance of identifying, engaging, and communicating with them to improve the success rate of your project. 

Stakeholders - who are they and what role do they play?

A stakeholder is a person, group, or organization that has an interest in, or will be affected by, the application being developed. Stakeholders play a key role in the citizen development process. They help the Citizen Developer capture requirements and they provide valuable feedback. Stakeholders can be huge champions, or they can stop a project in its track.

Understanding who the stakeholders are, their influence, and how they perceive the project is critical, so one of the first steps in mitigating stakeholder risk is to create a stakeholder directory. 

Stakeholder Directories

Stakeholder directories come in all shapes and sizes, but in general, the directory lists the stakeholders, their roles, their influence, and their level of support for the project. This directory is used by the Citizen Developer and squad as a reference tool as they engage with the stakeholders throughout the project. 

Stakeholder Engagement Plan

In the course of creating the stakeholder directory, Citizen Developers will also be creating a stakeholder engagement plan. This will encompass how hands-on the stakeholders will be in the project, how and when they will receive status updates, and their expectations. Some stakeholders will be heavily involved in the build and by engaging them early on, it will encourage collaboration and feedback, create a stronger solution, and help reduce the potential for miscommunication. 

Capturing Requirements from Stakeholders.

Now that the stakeholders have been identified and an engagement plan has been created, stakeholder requirements can be gathered. Stakeholders help to identify app requirements and why they’re important. These requirements are typically functional requirements pertaining to the user experience or workflows. The requirement list provides direction and focus throughout the app development and it also acts as a checklist to make sure that the requirements have been met.

In my past blogs, I have shared situations where an app was created and the problem solved and they lived happily ever after, but the following situation is about a missed opportunity and a lesson learned.

What happens when a stakeholder stops it all.

Situation: A fast-growing urban non-profit was sinking in a swamp of details they couldn’t manage anymore. The organization was led by a small executive team and run by volunteers.  There were four lines of service, each led by a volunteer.

Before: The quality of service and communication was showing signs of stress. Volunteers were working extra hours to keep up with inefficient methods.

Process: A Citizen Developer who was familiar with the organization saw the situation and believed an app could solve the chaos and help scale the organization efficiently. He presented the idea of a low-code/no-code (LCNC) app to the executive team (Enterprise Stakeholders). They liked the idea of an app and introduced the Citizen Developer to the volunteer leaders of the four lines of service. He met with each one to demonstrate a prototype and to discuss how the app could save them time and improve their service.

Three of the four volunteer leaders saw the app as a solution, but the fourth felt the expense was unnecessary. She was happy to work the extra hours to save money. She would not budge from her position and even though the executive team felt the expense was worth the saving, they bent to her wishes.

After: The Citizen Developer dropped the project. The organization and its volunteers continued to struggle and count on volunteer overtime to succeed.

Missed opportunity and lesson learned:

While the non-profit was still in its infancy and developing its structure, it had an opportunity to quickly and cost-effectively solve an operational issue that was only going to get worse. The organizational structure had no real leader which made it difficult when the solution was presented. They missed a huge opportunity. 

The Citizen Developer learned a valuable lesson. He skipped a few steps and dove right into solving the problem before fully understanding the stakeholders, their roles, and their influence. Had he spent a little more time engaging the stakeholders and listening to their concerns and pain points, he may have been able to alleviate the cost concerns with the resistant stakeholder. This was a valuable lesson to learn.

Some tips from my experience:

1. Identify the stakeholders quickly and engage them as soon as you can.
2. Communicate with stakeholders. Find out what their expectations and requirements are.
3. Listen and ask questions. Find out the stakeholder's pain points, needs, and perspective, not just about the solution, but the project in general. 

Stakeholders are crucial to the build and the ongoing success of the project. If the stakeholders aren’t supportive, you’re in for a steep climb that may not be worth the risk.

What did this post spark in you? Are you new to no-code/low-code app creation? Have you used a suitability assessment in your company? Please post your questions, comments, and stories below.

Want to learn more? Grab your copy of the newly released book Citizen Development: The Handbook for Creators and Change Makers.