Citizen developers or citizen development are terms you may be hearing more and more. There’s lots of talk about this trend that is helping democratise software development. And for good reason!
With more demand for software solutions than ever before, organisations are turning to citizen development. Whether you are considering trying it out for yourself or trying to understand if it’s a good strategy for your team or organisation, this blog will cover everything you need to know.
- What is meant by citizen developer?
- Why do we need citizen developers?
- What are the benefits of citizen development for a business?
- What are the downsides of citizen development?
- What do citizen developers do?
- Who can become a citizen developer?
- Frequently asked questions about citizen developers
What is meant by citizen developer?
Citizen developers are people who create software applications or tools for use by themselves, their team, or their organisation without having expertise in coding or traditional software development. They usually use no-code or low-code platforms to build their applications.
Why do we need citizen developers?
Businesses use software applications to function. Whether it’s inventory software, resource planning software, or marketing automation software. In fact, research shows teams use between 40-60 software applications! Software is critical.
Traditionally, there have been two options when it comes to implementing a new piece of software: buy it off the shelf or build it yourself. Buying off the shelf is a great option when budgets aren’t tight and you’re doing something relatively straightforward. But it becomes very limiting if you have something even a little unique or it becomes very pricey if you need any sophisticated features and fall into higher pricing tiers.
Building your own software means unique use cases are no problem, and there are no annual fees to pay. However, usually, you need software engineers or IT staff with coding knowledge to do this. Two teams where it’s hard to get your work prioritised because they are receiving so many requests from everyone. Completely DIY software is also hard to maintain. You need to handle making it accessible to everyone who needs it, ensuring it has enough data storage, updating security, creating new features, etc. What you save in monetary costs you soon make up for in maintenance time.
The middle ground is citizen development. People outside development and IT teams can create unique, low-cost software themselves, freeing up the IT and engineering teams to focus on projects that require higher technical skills.
What are the benefits of citizen development for a business?
There are numerous benefits for businesses that choose to go down the citizen development route.
Lower costs
Buying one no-code or low-code platform tends to be significantly cheaper than buying lots of different software tools where you don’t even use all the features you’re paying for. Because the platform can be reused in so many different apps for all different types of teams, it very quickly pays for itself.
It also is less expensive than building DIY software. Mainly because the platform vendor will do a lot of the complex or routine, yet essential, actions like ensuring there’s enough database storage or managing user access.
Greater company efficiency
Any team can now implement software solutions themselves that solve the various business problems they face. From automating manual tasks, to making data more easily accessible to everyone that needs it, employees can improve their day to day productivity. How many times have you had to do a tedious workaround because the off-the-shelf software tool you’re using doesn’t quite work the way you would like it to? With citizen development, these workarounds can become a thing of the past.
Less shadow IT
Shadow IT is the term given to software apps used across the company without the knowledge of IT. This has a number of issues–software spend is hard to track, compliance is difficult to maintain, and at its worst it can create big security flaws.
Instead, having a no-code/low-code platform that is approved by IT means people who would ordinarily introduce shadow IT can now create their own app in a tool that IT has a level of oversight on. That’s not to mean that IT knows the ins and outs of every app developed, but they can track the overall platform’s renewal dates, monitor any security flaws, and ensure the whole company is adhering to licensing terms.
Happier employees
Developing your staff and helping them learn new skills is critical to keeping employees happy, letting you retain your top performer. Citizen development is an excellent skill to empower staff with. There’s lots to learn and it can be challenging, but it’s also rewarding when apps start to get used.
More innovation
With citizen developers positioned across your organisation, there is a huge opportunity to innovate your internal processes and how daily work is carried out. Citizen developers will look at existing processes with new eyes and understand how it is possible to streamline or automate them using the tools they are proficient in. When new challenges arise, they are perfectly poised to build solutions quickly that help keep the organisation running efficiently.
What are the downsides of citizen development?
There is one big challenge with citizen development for an organisation and that’s if everything is done in the dark. If every team has one person using their own no-code platform, creating their own data sets etc, things very quickly can become hard to manage. While citizen development can help reduce shadow IT, it can also help increase it.
Instead, it’s better to decide on one, maybe two no/low-code platforms that the whole business uses that helps IT keep an eye on what is being built and used by who. It also means data can be better shared across different apps which then reduces the chances of conflicting and incorrect data.
It also means if someone leaves the organisation, there are other people with skills in the no/low-code platform who can take over maintenance of what they were working on. That way you avoid the common issue in DIY software development of someone leaving and their app being impossible to maintain.
What do citizen developers do?
The possibilities are quite frankly endless. Here are some of the common apps we see Starhive citizen developers building:
- Asset management for IT equipment, building interiors, vehicles, and even pianos!
- Relationships management for customers, partners, or vendors
- Request tracking for teams, for example tracking requests for marketing from the sales team
- Managing contracts and renewal dates
- Project management, especially where extra data is needed like processes, contracts, or customer data
- Approval apps for uses such as approving marketing copy updates or holiday requests
- Internal and external support portals
- Fun apps that add to the company culture. For example at Starhive we have a review app for restaurants around Stockholm!
Who can become a citizen developer?
Anyone! Anyone who has an interest in improving processes and problem solving and is relatively IT-savvy is a good candidate to become a citizen developer. While they tend to be more common in data, operations, and IT teams, there’s no rule! We’ve met citizen developers in marketing, office management, and beyond!
You don’t need to be especially technical or have previous development experience, but a willingness to learn, ability to think logically, and openness to taking on feedback and iterating solutions are all helpful traits.
What tools do citizen developers use?
Citizen developers use no-code or low-code platforms like Starhive. The advances in these platforms and their ability to simplify the app development process so you don’t need to know programming languages is what makes citizen development possible.
There’s a huge range of tools out there. On one side is the very technical low-code tools like Bubble.io and Retool where some coding knowledge is required as you need to provide and maintain your own database (if you want something complex).
On the other side are far less technical tools like Monday.com which, while not an app-builder per se, lets people create projects that can solve a problem for a team. So, in our opinion, it qualifies as a citizen developer platform. These less technical tools tend to have more limiting data platforms than you get with the technical tools.
See how Starhive compares to popular no/low-code platforms here.
We consider Starhive to be somewhere in the middle. We have an out-of-the-box data platform that is on-par but Starhive is much more similar to Monday.com in terms of usability and user friendliness.
Frequently asked questions about citizen developers
Is citizen developer an official job title?
Citizen developer is not an official role or job you will see being advertised on LinkedIn (or at least not today!). Instead it is more of a description of the type of person, or a persona. It indicates someone who likes to get hands-on, solve problems, and build things to make daily work more efficient.
How do I become a citizen developer?
The first thing we suggest is to start experimenting! Think of something in your work or personal life that is quite laborious or difficult today, yet simple. It could be a manual process at work that takes 10 minutes every day, or an organisational aspect of your personal life.
Then think about how you would like an ideal solution to look and start experimenting with no-code platforms like Starhive to build your solution. The vast majority of no-code platforms have free plans. There’s also lots of YouTube videos and forums on sites like Reddit where you can get how-to guides and advice on solving a specific issue in your chosen platform.
What is the difference between a citizen developer and a developer?
Developers are individuals who are highly specialised in specific programming languages and the tools surrounding them. They are also experts in software development practices such as the agile approach or how to very robustly test software.
Citizen developers on the other hand are usually self-taught and very proficient with a single no/low-code platform. They usually don’t have the breadth of knowledge a developer would have in software development.
In our opinion we would recommend using developers for apps you plan to sell, where the quality needs to be incredibly high and you likely want full control over how the product works and looks. For internal tools or supplementary customer facing services (like a portal for sharing brand logos and colours) a citizen developer could be highly suitable.
