Citizen development, a business process that enables non-IT employees to create software applications without needing extensive coding skills, could be key for a large number of organisations looking to accelerate their digital transformation journeys, according to a new report from Kissflow.
As much as 62 per cent of organisations now believe that citizen development programmes can benefit their digital transformation as they look to gain a competitive edge. Findings from the new ‘Citizen Development Trends‘ report by Kissflow, reveal that 86 per cent of businesses now have active citizen development programs in place, with 45 per cent having operated these for over a year.
Through the new initiative, ‘citizen developers’ can create solutions tailored to their specific needs without relying on IT departments. Kissflow also explained it believes citizen development is a progressive step towards democratising technology use and integrating non-IT developers into the technology development process.
This approach is especially relevant in the Middle East and Africa (MEA) where earlier research showed that a third (33 per cent) of organisations face resource constraints in custom app development, and the cost of outsourcing this function to skilled third-party developers can be prohibitively high. As a result, 80 per cent of tech leaders in the region see a pressing need to refine the app development process for effective digital transformation.
Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow
“With an increasing engineering talent entering the workforce across industries, the culture of business teams building ever more complex apps is becoming common,” explained Suresh Sambandam, CEO of Kissflow. “Organisations that have been early adopters of this paradigm are seeing transformative results, across the enterprise.
“Our latest research also shows that by empowering non-IT professionals to contribute to application development, businesses can innovate faster, reduce backlogs, and stay ahead in an increasingly competitive market.”
Keeping IT teams in the loop
How exactly is citizen development benefitting organisations? According to Kissflow, the top three benefits are:
A reduction in IT backlog
A reduction in process completion time
An increase in the number of new solutions deployed
Through intuitive drag-and-drop interfaces, and large libraries of pre-made templates, low or no-code platforms enable business users in departments with high-degrees of specialised, labour-intensive, and repeatable processes to rapidly and effectively automate these workflows.
Operations (30 per cent), human resources (28 per cent), marketing (20 per cent), and finance (12 per cent) departments are expected to lead the adoption of citizen development.
“For the full potential of citizen development to be realised, organisations must ensure it is adopted within IT’s control. Governance is critical, but at the same time, this doesn’t have to be complicated and add more workload for IT teams,” added Sambandam. “A robust governance layer serves as a guardrail for safe app creation by citizen developers, reducing the burden on IT departments for approving every application created. It helps mitigate the risk of data leaks and compliance violations and paves the way for a truly empowered citizen development workforce.”
While the report highlights the potential of citizen development, it also identifies key challenges. Data security remains the top concern for 44 per cent of CIOs, followed by the need for seamless integration with existing IT infrastructures. Governance and the lack of training for citizen developers are also noted as significant challenges that organisations must address to unlock the full potential of this paradigm.
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