Citizen development is a systematic approach to application development. It involves non-IT-trained employees developing business process automation applications, modernizing legacy applications, and automating manual business processes using IT-sanctioned low-code or no-code (LCNC) development platforms. Citizen development comes from the word ‘citizen developer,’ a term first coined by technology analyst firm Gartner. 

Regardless of the term, this approach to application development and the existence of citizen developers is not new. A citizen developer might have been using legacy tools like Lotus Notes, Microsoft Access, and others to develop business applications and now want to move to modern or best-of-breed technologies.   


While citizen development is an approach, we rely on low-code and no-code tools and platforms to implement this approach to app development. 

Citizen development has gained popularity because:   


  • Pre-packaged software (like SAP, Salesforce, SharePoint, et al.) is either difficult to modify for a company’s custom needs or not sufficient for IT to keep pace with growing business requirements.   
  • Businesses want to minimize the time and complexity of in-house application development. 


Therefore, we see many companies using citizen development platforms to meet their process automation needs and enhance the productivity and efficiency of their people and processes. 


To tackle the abundance of abbreviations and acronyms, remember that two other terms closely related to citizen development are low-code or no-code development and business process automation. 


Citizen Development and Low-Code or No-Code Development 


Citizen development and low-code or no-code development are often used interchangeably. Citizen development is an approach or method of developing business applications, whereas low-code or no-code is a type of toolset to build these apps. 

  • Citizen Development: The practice (or a modern method) of non-IT staff building business applications by using Low-Code/No-Code tools 
  • Low-Code or No-Code: The toolset and platforms used by the non-IT staff to build automation applications 


The first is the practice and framework of formally allowing application development outside the IT department (aka Citizen Development), and the second is their toolset. 


Citizen development opens up the development and deployment of new apps to a broader pool of talent within an organization. It eliminates the excessive dependence of an organization on professional software developers to develop new business and automation apps. 


Citizen Development and Business Process Automation

 

Business process automation (BPA) uses software to automate connected, complex, repeatable, multistage business processes and involves multiple IT systems. Citizen development is a means to achieve this cross-functional and cross-entity business process automation. 


Despite the popularity of citizen development as a new way of developing business applications, it is best to understand the role of citizen developer accurately. 


Who is a Citizen Developer? 


According to Gartner, A citizen developer is an employee who creates application capabilities for consumption by themselves or others, using tools that are not actively forbidden by IT or business units. A citizen developer is a persona, not a title or targeted role, and they report to a business unit or function other than IT. All citizen developers are business technologists; however, all business technologists are not necessarily citizen developers.”    

Employees you might identify as citizen developers may hold other organizational positions with titles including: 

  • Project Manager 
  • Process Analyst / Process Engineer 
  • Business Analyst 
  • Process Automation Engineer 

 

Why do we need Citizen Developers? 

The reason why organizations need citizen developers has its roots in the innate nature of problem solvers. These people love to solve problems to achieve either or all of the three objectives: 

  • Develop tools and apps on their own to create a better way to work 
  • Be more productive and efficient in their routine tasks/projects 
  • Help others in the organization 


Organizations can achieve three goals by relying on citizen developers: 

  • Reduce IT Backlog 
  • Broaden the pool of application developers 
  • Address the digital skills gap   


Reduce IT Backlog 


As the business climate becomes more dynamic, digital, and competitive, traditional IT teams and tools are struggling to keep up with the pace of change. Organizations need new applications, automation, and the orchestration of automated processes. That is where the citizen developers help an organization to develop and implement innovative solutions quickly. 


Broaden the Pool of Developers 


Citizen development enables an organization to broaden the pool of talent that can develop, innovate and deliver value for the business and the customer. To deal with ever-changing and fluid business needs, companies need a broader group of organizational talent to innovate and create custom applications on a low-code or no-code development platform. 


Citizen development also builds on the premise that software and application development should be made accessible to most employees in an organization instead of being restricted to highly sought-after professional developers only. 

 

Address the IT Talent Crunch 


According to Gartner, “CIOs are struggling to meet the digital skills gap in their organizations” citizen development helps CIOs and other IT leaders to move away from the traditional concept where IT delivered all technology solutions. 


Instead, citizen development equips employees to build their solutions. It allows leaders to create digital talent outside of the IT department. They can fast-track the launch of innovative solutions by bringing application development capabilities to departments. A dedicated group of citizen developers can help fulfill the overwhelming demand for innovation and new apps. 


However, working on a solo project in your cubicle to automate specific tasks is much simpler than supporting enterprise-grade app development needs. The latter needs more training, development, and governance considerations. 


Therefore, to become a citizen developer capable of developing apps for enterprise use cases, it is essential to learn and train systematically.   


Becoming a Citizen Developer 


Citizen development’s core is the concept of quickly turning ideas into apps using low-code or no-code tools. Here are some courses you can take to become a citizen developer. 


  • Citizen developer foundation course: The PMI Citizen Development Foundation Course is a 90-minute, self-paced online course that provides the perfect launch pad for your low-code/no-code journey. The main parts of this course include Introduction to Citizen Development, Citizen Development Overview Canvas, and Ideation 2.0. 


  • Courses based on learning paths: You can also choose your courses based on your role and learning objectives. For instance, PMI also offers two other courses, including PMI Citizen Developer Practitioner and PMI Citizen Developer Business Architect. You can access the courses here. 


  • Citizen developer platform-specific courses: AgilePoint Getting Started Training’ course provides an online self-learning resource to help you quickly acquire an overview of the platform’s enterprise-class low-code/no-code automation capabilities. You can learn the fundamentals of implementing task automation, cross-functional automation at scale, and application development within your organization. 

 

No matter what path of training as a citizen developer you adopt, it is helpful to remember that citizen developers help bring innovation to processes, products, and how an organization operates. Hence, citizen development should be closely tied to innovation.   


Citizen Development and Innovation 

 

Richard Branson, a British billionaire, entrepreneur, and business magnate, once said, “Innovation happens when people are given the freedom to ask questions and the resources and power to find the answers.” 


Individuals and departments in large organizations often feel the need to take greater control of the solutions and applications necessary to achieve their business goals. That’s where citizen development is a key to fulfilling the demand for innovation. 


Traditionally, over-reliance on corporate IT prevents business users from achieving faster Time-to-Market, reducing the cost of ownership, and enterprise-wide innovation. 


A layered low-code or no-code platform helps enterprise leaders to build a permanent innovation lab. An example of this innovation lab is when an international high-tech company with 50+ global subsidiaries used its citizen developers and professional developers to fulfill their custom application needs through low-code or no-code development platforms. 


Thus, citizen development ultimately brings the capability to innovate to many people within an organization while ensuring a comparatively lower cost of ownership. 


However, it is vital to consider the risks potentially associated with the apps and solutions developed by citizen developers. Enforcing proper guardrails and utilizing governance capabilities of citizen development platforms play an essential role in mitigating any risk.   

 

Citizen Development Governance 


Governance of citizen development means developing and administering policies, processes, and procedures for citizen development initiatives. Organizations of any size can implement citizen development governance practices as a strategy, from a single to a large group of multi-department citizen developers. 


The purpose of governance is to ensure that the organization develops a consistent pattern of well-governed applications and solutions by following standardized processes and procedures for implementing AgilePoint as an enterprise-wide citizen development platform. 


For ease of understanding, we divide citizen development governance into: 



Principles and Practices 


Below are four basic principles to ensure proper governance of your citizen development program: 


1.   The program or the project needs an executive champion. Citizen development projects must obtain buy-in from corporate IT and anyone affected by the implementation. 


2.   Designate a person with authority to implement citizen development governance processes and rules. It may take the form of a project team with responsibilities that include dealing with deployment considerations, setting project milestones, and measuring performance. 


3.   Establish standard procedures and channels for implementing new citizen development projects. 


4.   Clearly define the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in a citizen development project. Each project needs managing with proper ownership of tasks, planning, and control. 

 

Technical Aspects 

The core technical aspects of governing citizen development projects include: 

  • Technical infrastructure setup (AgilePoint provides a dedicated Governance Guide for AgilePoint customers, a general purpose version of which can be accessed here
  • Data Governance 
  • Security 
  • Release Management 
  • Integration & platform extensibility 
  • Identity and access management (IAM) 
  • Audit capability 
  • Training 


We have elaborated in detail on the broad concept of citizen development. However, as a citizen developer, it is helpful to understand the market map of citizen development tools and platforms. 


Gartner and Forrester Categorization of Citizen Development Platforms 


More than 200 low-code or no-code tools (LCNC) differentiate themselves based on various factors—from the mundane to the profound. This plethora of tools creates what author Barry Schwartz calls ‘The Paradox of Choice.’ 


According to Gartner, below are some major categories of tools and platforms that citizen developers can use to create automation apps: 

  • Citizen Automation and Development Platforms 
  • Low-Code Application Platforms (LCAP) 
  • Multi-experience Development Platforms (MXDP) 
  • Robotic Process Automation (RPA) 
  • Intelligent Business Process Management Suites (iBPMS) 
  • Integration Platform-as-a-Service (i-PaaS) 


A significant consideration while choosing your citizen development platform is whether you plan to use it in small and medium enterprises or if you intend to use it for enterprise-grade complex use cases. 


For simple use cases, Gartner’s vendor list of citizen automation and development platforms is a good starting point for vendor selection. However, if you need an enterprise-grade citizen development platform with sophisticated governance capabilities, LCAP and iBPMS suites may be more relevant to your use cases. 


  • AgilePoint 
  • Appian 
  • Betty Blocks 
  • Bizagi 
  • Outsystems 
  • Mendix 
  • Quickbase 
  • Track Via 

 

Forrester positions citizen development platforms as digital process automation (DPA) vendors. AgilePoint is known as one of the most robust DPA platforms, according to Forrester Wave Report on DPA Software published in Q4-2021. You may come across vendors with different product and integration capabilities, market focus, and whether the platform is developer-centric, business-user-centric, or empowers both user groups with equal elegance. 


As with any innovative technology, citizen development has both pros and cons.   


Pros and Cons of Citizen Development 


It’s one thing to recognize the positive impact that citizen development can have on organizational agility and the capacity to innovate; it’s another thing to get it right. 


A good citizen development platform allows you to pursue two digital transformation highways simultaneously – an operational one and a transformational one. 


A well-governed enterprise citizen development platform: 


  • Empowers citizen developers to build multiple types of applications (data-centric apps, mobile apps, and process-centric applications 
  • Increases transparency and visibility and unlocks deeper understandings of Data across apps, systems, and processes 
  • Provides personalized customer and partner experiences across multiple channels 
  • Easily embeds into your existing systems and applications (like SAP, Salesforce, and other ERPs) 
  • Allows application and platform extension without having to rebuild apps 
  • Conveniently integrates with enterprise systems. 


Generic benefits you can expect to reap by adopting the citizen development approach include: 

  • Reducing the burden on the corporate IT department 
  • Lower cost of developing new apps and solutions 
  • Greater flexibility to customize apps compared to packaged software 
  • Reduces time-to-market of new products/solutions 
  • Helps plug the talent gap by mentoring existing staff to become Citizen Developers 
  • Reduces “ Shadow IT” 


However, below are some of the downsides of improper management of your citizen development initiatives: 

  • Choosing an inappropriate platform that only supports limited or simple use cases, like task automation
  • Lack of governance and compliance tooling in the chosen platform
  • Lack of deeper integration with 3rd party software and tools 
  • User experience (UX) and training challenges 
  • Poor quality of apps (due to lack of proper training in solution/app development) 
  • Security vulnerabilities if the Citizen Development platform lacks governance tooling
  • Poor user adoption due to absence of change management efforts


Lately, one organization that has stood out in advocating and evangelizing citizen development is the Project Management Insititute (PMI). 


Project Management Institute’s Role in Citizen Development 

 

According to Forrester, there will be a shortage of 500,000 software developers in the United States alone by 2024. 


To help more people and business users to become citizen developers, the Project Management Institute (PMI) recently launched the first vendor-agnostic set of educational resources for citizen development. 


The “Citizen Developer Portal” contains three introductory courses, webinars, and other resources that can help an organization adopt Citizen Development in a structured and manageable way. 

 

The PMI framework empowers non-developers to create applications, allowing them to innovate and work more efficiently. 

Apart from PMI vendor-agnostic framework, a few technology analyst firms regularly publish research reports about Citizen Development.   


Research Reports about Citizen Development 


Some of the leading research and analyst firms that regularly publish reports about citizen development platforms include: 


1.   Gartner: Magic Quadrant report about Low-Code or No-Code platforms 

2.   Forrester: The Forrester Wave™ report on Digital Process Automation platforms 

3.   The Everest Group: Low-code Workflow Automation Platforms Compendium 2022 


Since the field of citizen development is still evolving, we have been fielding some frequently asked questions (FAQs) listed below. 

 

Frequently Asked Questions about Citizen Development 


What is Citizen Development? 

According to the Project Management Institute, “Citizen Development is one of the latest and most exciting business movements. It enables Project Managers and other non-developers to create applications.” 

 

How to become a Citizen Developer? 

You can become a citizen developer by taking PMI Citizen Developer Foundation Course. Once completed, you can opt for two other PMI courses: the PMI Citizen Developer Practitioner and PMI Citizen Developer Business Architect. To become proficient at using a specific platform, you can take the ‘ AgilePoint Getting Started’ training" course to become a Citizen Developer.   

 

What is the salary of a Citizen Developer? 


Glassdoor estimates the salary of a citizen developer to be $118,430 per year. This number represents the median, which is the midpoint of the ranges from Glassdoor’s proprietary Total Pay Estimate model and based on salaries collected from its users. According to another recruitment website, ZipRecruiter, the average annual citizen developer salary as of August 2022 is $101720. The majority pay between $75000 to $125500 per year. 


Is Citizen Developer a job title or not? 

Companies are increasingly using the term citizen developer in their job advertisements. However, it’s not a formal title, and you might come across people with the below designations that generally assume the responsibilities of a citizen developer. 


  • Application Developer 
  • Cloud Architect. 
  • Workflow Automation Engineer 
  • Process Automation Architect 
  • Systems Engineer 
  • Strategic Development Manager. 


With all said and done, we have a long and rich history of serving some of the world's largest and most innovative companies with their citizen development initiatives. AgilePoint has a well-governed and sustainable approach to enabling citizen development. 


How AgilePoint Enables Citizen Development


AgilePoint is the industry’s first all-in-one low-code or no-code development platform to enable citizen development for the enterprise. The AgilePoint platform enables an agile operating model to dramatically improve operational performance, accelerate time-to-market, expand employee engagement, unlock innovation, and improve quality. While most process automation solutions handle only specific categories of applications, AgilePoint has been architected to address all application requirements on one platform. As a result, AgilePoint clients require fewer low-code tools, and IT support resources, delivering the industry’s lowest total cost of ownership.


AgilePoint provides an end-to-end business solution for enterprises seeking to automate and transform their processes through low-code development.  AgilePoint approaches citizen development to reduce the divide between business and IT.

To quickly gain value from your citizen development projects, we identify the processes listed below as low-hanging fruit. 

  • Employee and customer onboarding 
  • Order to cash 
  • Capital Appropriation 
  • Pay Cycle Management 


REQUEST your FREE TRIAL today to see how AgilePoint helps you unlock automation at scale to build robust business applications faster on a low-code development platform without having to depend on IT or write custom code.

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