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Citizen Development Insights

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Citizen development is a disruptive approach to digital transformation and organizational innovation, where teams are empowered to turn ideas into applications using no-code/low-code technology. This blog provides insights, advice and practical knowledge from thought leaders and practitioners in Citizen Development.

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Cameron McGaughy
Ron Immink
Jody Temple White
Jason Mayall
Chandrasekaran Audivaragan
Jelili Odunayo Kazeem
Mario Trentim
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Ryan Whitmore
Justin Sears
Raveesh Dewan
Dalibor Ninkovic
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Kimberly Whitby
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Martin Kalliomaki
Richard Earley
Maelisa Woulfe
Octavio Arranz

Recent Posts

Empowering Marketers: How Citizen Development Transforms Marketing Strategies

Turbocharge Your Marketing: The Power of Citizen Development

5 Top Citizen Development Myths Busted

Empowering Citizen Developers: Overcoming 5 Common Challenges Together

Citizen Development: The Path to Success Starts Small

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CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT: A SURE PATHWAY TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Citizen Development (CD) describes the ability for a user, the citizen developer, to create applications without coding expertise, significantly faster, and at a fraction of the cost. Citizen Development platforms have matured to the point that they minimize the need for manual coding when building serious, enterprise-grade applications.

Forrester estimates that by 2024 there will be a deficit of 500,000 software developers in the U.S. alone. No doubt, there is a vacuum, a problem to be solved.

PMI, however, came to the rescue and has developed and launched the world's first vendor-agnostic governance framework for Citizen Development (PMI Citizen Developer TM).

This is to expand the Project Managers toolkit and guide developers and organizations to take full advantage of the benefits of CD while maintaining IT governance and security compliance to enhance project success.

Forrester estimates that by 2024 there will be a deficit of 500,000 software developers in the U.S. alone.

Forrester also forecasts that the low-code market will top $21 billion spend by 2022.

The Power of Solution Is at the Core of the Business Now

With Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC), a project manager or any citizen developer can transform ideas into action solutions, services can be delivered cheaper and faster. These LCNC platforms are growing daily, and so are the needs to develop cheaper apps, products, and services in less time.

Any organization that gives Citizen Developers the opportunities to bring ideas to life using LCNC platforms is surely on its way to digitally transform itself. Ideas abound, the tools are now in the hands of the people (employees), and business processes are more flexible. The power to offer solutions is in the hands of those at the core of business processes to deliver results faster.

The pandemic has shown that businesses must respond rapidly to situations. Digital transformation has taken the front seat for most processes.  Businesses can’t afford weeks and months to come up with solutions. Time-to-market is more reduced now. Businesses are under pressure to optimize processes and deliver quick products/services in less time.

Digital Transformation through Citizen Development

LCNC supports digital transformation, creates more opportunities, grows the business with new ideas, and increases productivity. When you give the people all the tools and the flexibility to bring ideas to life, the organizational growth and digital transformation will be massive.

The speed at which apps, products, and services are delivered using LCNC platforms shown that it is easier to automate business processes and quickly achieve digital innovation.

This is because Citizen Developers do not have to spend time on apps development rules and other time-consuming aspects of apps development. Citizen Developers are bringing major changes to how organizations work:

  1. They provide the capacity to IT teams as they can take on app development requests themselves.
  2. They, as domain experts, have the potential to solve an organization's challenges fast and effectively.
  3. They increase the productivity of the organization.
  4. They reduce time-to-market for their organizations and clients.

This is because CD enables businesses to keep up with the rapidly changing technology landscape using LCNC platforms to digitally transform the organization.

Here is what other companies have done with citizen development using LCNC platforms. These are clear validations of the citizen development revolution.

Citizen development is delivering digital transformation.

How has your organization been digitally transformed using LCNC? Please share.

Posted by Jelili Odunayo Kazeem on: March 01, 2021 11:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The 4Ps of Citizen Development: Products, Promptness, People, and Process Framework

Lots of people think Citizen Development is still a buzzword. However, it is interesting to know how the low-code/no-code platforms have grown over the years. I joined the Low-code & No-code (Rapid Application Development by low-code citizen developers) and the Toronto Citizen Developer User Group recently on LinkedIn and was amazed at how people have been doing great with the available low-code/no-code platforms. These platforms have made business users see an opportunity to optimize a process and take it upon themselves to create their apps.

 

Some have argued, these disruptions in IT will not survive enterprise products, you need to train people to adapt, and those behind the blocks, doing the plug and play designs are IT savvy. Covid19 made the world know that the virus determines the timeline and we just have to regularize the situations to fit. The need for products and services, streamlining business processes determines the timeline now, it is growing by the day, low-code/no-code platforms have come to the rescue, and Project Management Institute (PMI) has developed the world’s first vendor-agnostic governance framework for citizen development (PMI Citizen DeveloperTM).

One of the major factors affecting the prompt delivery of IT products is the miscommunications between the developers and the end-users. Sometimes, these developers waste months and years developing products that would become obsolete or useless for the users. At the core of these are the Four (4) Ps to citizen development struggling behind the scene to take charge. These are products, promptness, people, and process framework. However, all of these are as important as the other.

 

  1. PRODUCTS

No doubt, there is a higher demand for IT products or services, the backlogs are growing more than ever, and the IT departments are under pressure to meet this growing demand. Low-code/No-code platforms are growing by the day. The links below are clear on this.

Gartner estimates that low-code app platforms would account for over 65% of development by 2024 (https://www.salesforce.com/blog/gartner-lcap/).

Forrester forecasts that the low-code market would top $21 billion spendings 2022 (https://go.forrester.com/blogs/why-you-need-to-know-about-low-code-even-if-youre-not-responsible-for-software-delivery/).

 

 

The demand for enterprise apps to solve complex issues with a couple of clicks is rapidly growing. These growing products determine the timeline now. The available options to get it done faster are the Low-code/No-code platforms. These platforms are equally getting better, products or services are delivered to customers cheaper in less time.

 

      2. PROMPTNESS

The ease of delivery of products or services in less time has kept low-code/no-code platforms tall. The real-time delivery with fewer clicks or moving blocks is not a disruption, but an easier way of developing products. Quick response to deliver value from Citizen Developers with a few clicks after understanding the requirements is key to making customers happy. Low-code/no-code platforms employ drag and drop tools instead of the usual long codes of programming. Platforms are easily comprehensible and they require less training. They have easy features, tools, and models. Citizen Developers can experiment, prototype, and deliver apps in hours to customers.

 

       3. PEOPLE

At the core of whole lots about low-code/no-code are the products to service the people. Ideas abound, the tools are now in the hands of the people (employees), and business processes are more flexible. The power to offer solutions is in the hands of those at the core of business processes to deliver results faster.

"The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity" - Tom Peters

When you give the people all the tools and the flexibility to bring ideas to life, the organizational growth will be massive. End users can now build departmental, customized, and public applications using low-code/no-code platforms. The demand for products or services is growing. There are more interactions between the people (customers and citizen developers). It unites the IT and the business teams too.

 

 

        4. PROCESS FRAMEWORK

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has developed the world’s first vendor-agnostic governance framework for citizen development (PMI Citizen DeveloperTM).

“PMI recognizes the critical role that citizen development plays in empowering individuals and organizations,” Mr. Prashara from PMI says. “As organizations look to leverage citizen development in their digital transformation programs, there are many pitfalls to avoid, including the lack of a comprehensive methodology and framework and adequate training to allow citizen developers to succeed. PMI is addressing this gap by providing a vendor-agnostic framework to support professionals’ need to learn the basics and best practices, but also organizations’ need to unlock the potential of citizen development in compliance with IT governance and security. This will give IT the confidence to scale citizen development across the enterprise to accelerate the organization’s transformation efforts.”

This framework includes a set of umbrella activities that are applicable across the entire Citizen Development process.

 

Your opinions and insights will be quite appreciated,  feel free to leave them here. 
Thank you.

 

Posted by Jelili Odunayo Kazeem on: February 01, 2021 02:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (9)

How Will Citizen Development Impact Leadership, Decision-Making and How Projects are Run? Part 3

Welcome to part 3 of my 3-part series on how citizen development is impacting projects and project management. Through the lens of citizen development, I am looking at the areas of

  1. Leadership – How citizen development related to the leadership face
  2. Project Manager – How citizen development relates to the PM face  
  3. Decision making – How citizen development can impact decision making

 

If you missed parts 1 and 2 you can read them here and here.

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/67865/How-Will-Citizen-Development-Impact-Leadership--Decision-Making-and-How-Projects-are-Run--Part-1

https://www.projectmanagement.com/blog-post/67946/How-Will-Citizen-Development-Impact-Leadership--Decision-Making-and-How-Projects-are-Run--Part-2

 

How Citizen Development Can Impact Decision Making

 

At the core of Citizen Development lies decision-making about projects and programs that must align with organizational strategic objectives, the readiness of the decision-makers, the underlying factor of Return on Investment (ROI), and the uncertainties of citizen development, but one factor that keeps citizen development ahead is the speed of delivery of products or services in less time.

 

Lots of programs have failed even though time and a huge amount of funds were spent to deliver the benefits. Sometimes, products become obsolete at roll-out. The recent Covid-19 saga has shown the world that one has to respond faster to contain it. Real-time development and deployment of products or services is key to citizen development.

 

In my training as a Software Tester, one must not wait to find all the defects for a product to go live, some defects will pop up when the product goes live in different environments. Feedbacks will eventually help in fine-tuning the flexibilities required when the product is live and in use.

 

 

It is great to know citizen development is already launched on an existing low-code/no-code (LCNC) platform. The usage of LCNC is on the increase and the platform will get better as it progresses. The world is changing, the need for building applications will grow higher and the world will not find a better way to deliver products or services than to leverage on a low-code/no-code platform to deliver applications cheaper and in less time.

 

Applications will be launched faster with a higher Return on investment (ROI). This will not be negotiable for CEOs who always go for profit maximization. The low-code/no-code market will be huge in the nearest years.

 

This boom will reshape organizational development in my opinion. This is because it will create more opportunities for both the organization and the employees. Ideas can be brought to life in no time, and organizational growth will be rapid.

 

The strength of every organization is the people (employee), the fear of investing lots of resources on the employee ideas will be gone with a low code/no-code platform and ideas can be brought to life faster and cheaper.

 

The growth will be unstoppable with a low code/no-code platform.

 

 

Posted by Jelili Odunayo Kazeem on: January 27, 2021 02:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
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