In this changing IT landscape, Citizen Development plays a vital role in bringing efficiency & productivity to the existing SDLC. It enables us to take the next step of bypassing or keeping lesser dependency on the coding phase in its run-up to building enterprise-level business applications. With having a complete understanding of Citizen Development, teams can create apps using simple interfaces. With not much technical background required they will be able to build systems using any low code or no-code platforms. It facilitates the low-code application development environment and given the shortage of software developers, Citizen Development significantly reduces the burden on the IT departments. According to one of the Forrester Research estimates, there would be a shortfall of 5 lakhs software developers in the US by 2024. Apart from reducing the coding dependency, it can also be a lower-cost option & improve time-to-market, enhancing the overall efficiency of the entire project lifecycle. In this VUCA world, Citizen Development can be very useful where an organization’s agility is gauged not only by their faster adoption but also on their anticipation to change. It is aligned with the “fail fast, learn fast” principle.

Brings Agility: Organizations have adopted an agile way of working by placing importance on the outcome over processes. Citizen development is taking a level up by minimizing the duration further between the idea and a working app. Such “hyper-agility” can only be possible in an environment that supports collaboration, autonomy & continuous improvement. This could also be a panacea to organizations struggling to address issues or hindrances while embracing Digital transformation. Citizen Development brings in technological innovation which organizations are looking for long.

Project Managers are change-makers in any organization & they are accountable for driving projects and achieving outcomes that are in complete alignment with the organization's strategic goals. By democratizing software, Project Managers can unleash the power of technology to achieve their project’s objectives within shorter timelines, approved budget & superior quality. They have a huge resource pool to work with as non-tech employees turning into citizen developers play a large role in development using low-code platforms, reducing dependency on the high-skilled IT professionals. This also calls for a larger collaboration of employees with skilled IT people to ensure applications are developed in compliance with the organizations’ set standards. With no lengthier coding cycle to get into, project managers can drive multiple iterations from design to deploy faster only to find no or lesser discrepancies between what is built & what was asked for. Citizen Development equips Project Managers by having them create such tools & solutions at every level & business functions so that the PM can focus on delivering outcomes without being concerned about having an appropriate solutioning as these tools facilitate faster decision-making due to it bringing improved visibility & understanding within the stakeholders. By combining design & development in one phase, there are lesser management overheads, resulting in minimum documentation, and reduced planning & monitoring, which in turn further boosts speed & efficiency.

Project Managers can focus on real business changes & spend their time on having those conversations, without getting bothered with the schedule or team’s productivity. An integrated Citizen Development tool provides an objective-specific dashboard that can be customizable based on the organization’s need, for them to plan their next move. There are a lot of automation tools, which automate the typical project management activity like following up with team members, monitoring scheduling & keeping a check on costs, leaving project managers to focus on those tasks that add more value.

Having said all this, citizen development strategy needs to be carefully carved out & a framework needs to be laid out for all the citizen developers working in an organization. This should be done to safeguard against any sort of potential threats arising due to security, performance, data reliability, and hence the governance strategies are built to ensure that they are being operated within the organization-wide framework.

Citizen development is gradually but steadily getting widely accepted by organizations across various industries. Gartner estimates that 65% of the application development will be carried out using the low-code application development platform by 2024. Hence, it is inevitable for organizational leaders to perceive its benefits and adopt the citizen development program for their employees to bring the change, they initially had envisioned. For Project Managers PMI has taken a great initiative in polarizing the knowledge & equipping the project managers with the relevant skills, for organizations to smoothly adopt citizen development. This also turns out to be a great opportunity for Project Managers to diversify their skills like looking out for possible & sustainable solutions to the potential business problem. The training course PMI provides really catalyzes in upskilling project managers & empowering them to play a critical role in leading business change. The potential of citizen development needs to be harnessed to bring business agility, digital business transformation & technological innovation.

Thanks for reading . Please feel free to share your comments and feedback.