How Citizen Development Enables Digital Transformation

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In 2012, Gartner analysts stated that " We're all developers now. " The term "low-code platform" refers to the proliferation of low-code platforms that enable non-technical users to build business applications and services within their organizations. According to Gartner , by 2024, 74% of organizations will use four or more low-code development tools for application development and citizen developer initiatives.

As digital transformation has accelerated in recent years, the term “citizen developers” has been coined to describe the rapidly evolving roles that non-technical developers play within their organizations. In this article, we’ll explore what citizen development is and the important role that non-technical users will play in driving digital transformation.

What is citizen development?
Gartner defines a citizen developer as "a user who creates new business applications for consumption by others using enterprise IT-sanctioned development and runtime environments." A 2015 Intuit Quickbase report, The State of Citizen Development Report , describes citizen developers as "problem solvers across industries who have the drive and determination to engage in application development even if they lack traditional coding skills."

Simply put, a citizen developer is a non-technical pakistan phone number user who creates automation solutions for their organization.

Why are citizen developers essential to digital transformation?
COVID-19 has unexpectedly accelerated digital transformation by at least 6 years. Due to this rapid acceleration, there is a significant shortage of trained and experienced software developers . Additionally, IT departments are often understaffed, overworked, and often have limited access to resources.

This is true even for large organizations. For example, General Electric has an IT team of some 10,000 technicians but continues to struggle to fill the demand gap. In a recent interview with Chris Drumgoole, GE’s CIO, he said that citizen development is the most transformative concept in IT today.

"We want a financier, an energy engineer or an aviator to be able to write their own software and applications.

Research suggests that more and more organizations are relying on citizen developers and innovative tools to meet their needs. According to a recent Gartner survey, 41% of respondents have already implemented citizen development initiatives, while 20% plan to implement them. A recent IBM survey found that 80% of organizations surveyed are partnering with citizen developers to meet their needs.