What is a Citizen Development Platform and Why Does it Matter?

Organizations are driven to adopt citizen development due to the increased demand for software and the need for more skilled developers. Through citizen development programs, non-technical employees can develop unique software applications for themselves or their teams with little to no coding experience.

The most common citizen development areas are customer service, finance, operations, and HR. This framework increases the number of developers available to your business and adds knowledge and an original perspective to the software development process.

What is Citizen Development?

When non-IT-trained staff members use low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms to create business-critical applications, this approach is known as “citizen development.” It approves applications made using citizen development techniques.

This separates the meaning of citizen development from that of shadow IT. Non-IT experts, known as citizen developers, look for low-code or no-code solutions to solve their problems.

As digital agility develops, more employees become citizen developers and produce their applications. Citizen developers can be found in many organizations’ human resources, R&D, finance, and customer service divisions.

Who is a Citizen Developer?

A citizen developer is an employee who uses low-code or no-code platforms to build software applications for their team or others without the help of IT. Rather than being a role, a citizen developer is a personality. They use development techniques that IT has approved and sanctioned while they create programs in runtime environments.

Each citizen programmer possesses unique skills and expertise in specialized domains but needs more coding experience. They are change-driven problem solvers with a basic understanding of technology. Drag-and-drop interfaces are used by the users of no-code and low-code platforms to implement their ideas.

The Need for a Citizen Development Platform

Efficiency and productivity have increased for companies that invest time and money in the citizen development community. Earlier, businesses used to waste time waiting for IT specialists to fix a problem, but nowadays, citizen development platforms have become a regular procedure in many application development organizations.

Also, any employee who learns and understands the use of LCNC platforms can create software or teach a fellow employee, expanding the community of citizen developers. Any business process becomes more efficient in both situations.

Benefits of Citizen development

Citizen development helps build business agility and enhances sustainability. Some of the major benefits of citizen development in an organization are:

Enhanced Agility

Citizen developers may create solutions in a fraction of the time required by conventional software development techniques, responding promptly to changing business needs. Companies can stay one step ahead of the competition and quickly change directions to take on new challenges.

Affordable Solutions

Citizen developers can build solutions faster and inexpensively with low-code and no-code platforms than with conventional software development techniques. Because of this, it is simpler for businesses to keep within their budgets and maximize their investment.

Efficiency and New Ideas

The field of application development is expanding every day. A business that wants to stay current must frequently produce new applications. Organizations can create apps that respond to changing requirements and market demands due to LCNC and citizen development. To build apps that adapt to new needs and market demands much faster than before. Citizen application development motivates innovation and fosters creative thinking.

Speed

The time it takes to release new apps is reduced by citizen development. For example, app users can provide immediate feedback to citizen developers who are developing it. They are capable of making corrections on their own if something needs mending. Since non-IT experts are more familiar with business requirements and difficulties, their solutions typically provide better problem-solving and improved customer experiences.

Better user experience

Citizen developers can develop solutions specifically targeted to end customers’ needs due to their distinctive perspective. As a result, users have a better experience using the products, and adoption rates are higher.

Greater Innovation

Companies can access a fresh source of innovation and creativity by enabling citizen developers. This results in increased innovation and the development of unique solutions that can drive growth and competitiveness.

Improved Alignment with Business Goals

Citizen developers can develop solutions per the organization’s goals because they thoroughly understand the business and its objectives. Better results and more effective resource use are the results of this.

Businesses that invest in citizen developers stand to gain significantly from cost savings, enhanced agility, an improved user experience, increased innovation, and better alignment with corporate objectives. For businesses of all sizes, the advent of the citizen developer movement heralds a new era in software development. Accept this modification and benefit from a more productive and efficient development process.

HCL Domino – An Ideal Platform for Citizen Developers

HCL Domino, a rapid application development platform, continues evolving to meet the needs of the modern business — it’s collaborative, low-code, mobile, and web-ready.

The latest release of Domino, v12.0.2, makes it easy to develop robust, secure, and enterprise-grade workflow-based applications.

HCL Domino empowers you to become a citizen developer by providing a low-code platform that enables you to create custom business applications, automate processes, and streamline collaboration without requiring extensive technical skills.  And helping citizen developers across verticals build applications up to 60-70% faster to automate their manual processes and drive efficiency, productivity, and transparency. Click here for a demo.