Who is Citizen Developer and what benefits can it bring to your business?

Who is Citizen Developer?

Citizen Developer is a person who perfectly understands the needs of the IT industry, at the same time not knowing how to program or having only basic knowledge in this field.

Still, such a person can make important business decisions in the IT industry. It is not a developer, but nevertheless creates applications using the available Low-Code/No-Code tools.

Who should be a citizen developer?

Own Startup

It is worth being a citizen developer if you are thinking about starting your own startup. Thanks to this, you will be able to build it yourself, without having to invest a lot of money and time. You'll build an MVP using No-Code tools in as little as 4-8 weeks.

In short, it can be said that Citizen Developer is a person who can build his own startup without programming skills. If you are thinking about your application, it is worth being a citizen developer.

Career in IT

If someone were to ask what kind of employees the IT industry will need in the future to meet the market demand, it would certainly be a citizen developer.

Every year more and more applications are created. This is associated with high demand, especially in the B2B sector. Not so long ago, most companies carried out operational activities exclusively on spreadsheets or desktop databases, and now for many companies this is downright unimaginable. Most of the tasks are done through different applications. This results in more and more jobs being created.

The solution to the high demand for applications, at the same time with the difficulty of finding a suitably qualified staff of programmers, is precisely to build in No-Code and hire citizen developers.

Citizen Development Changes the Terms of the Game

We can ask ourselves - what happens if a software company stops providing solutions on time? What are the business consequences of this situation? On the one hand, great dissatisfaction among developers causing frustration in them, on the other hand, the loss of the opportunity to reduce production costs. If, in addition, we combine this with the loss of the opportunity to achieve the main business objectives, which makes us lose the competitive advantage in the market, the matter is lost. That's when Citizen Developer takes on even more importance.

What are the benefits of Citizen Development?

• Increased demand for applications from various business sectors.
  Today, almost every company uses various solutions of many applications that help with everyday tasks practically at every stage of doing business. Whether you optimize your current marketing or sales activities, or simply help optimize tedious tasks. The International Data Corporation predicts that more than 500 million applications will be created by 2023. This is the same as it has been created in the last 40 years. These figures are incredible, but they represent the real demand of this market. Due to the limited resources of the IT industry, the market will never be able to build the applications that businesses need on time. Citizen Development is proving to be the best way to tackle this challenge.
• The growing problem of insufficient number of qualified programmers.
  It is not necessary to explain to anyone in the IT industry that there are simply too few good programmers on the market. Unfortunately, this has an impact on the rising costs of development, which is certainly not helped by inflation, which in Poland has been the highest in years. It is also worth noting that Polish companies compete in the fight for a good employee also with foreign companies, which are often much more profitable due to their larger capitalization. This situation carries a high business risk, which can lead to the closure of many prosperous companies, whose development costs will be exceeded. Citizen development and all No-Code solutions related to it also come up against this.
• Increase the productivity of the IT department and any business benefits that come with it.
  Citizen developers with the help of the right solutions will relieve developers of complex tasks, so that production costs would be lower, and developers could take on much more complex tasks during this time.
• Breaking down barriers between departments
  Often, the larger the company, the greater the barriers between departments in the organization. The introduction of citizen development in the company could strengthen the cooperation between the IT department and the business department, which would certainly have a positive impact on the communication level and could promote the building of relationships.

What technology to choose?

All these goals could be achieved by popularizing the concept of citizen developers and their role in IT companies. The benefits are obvious, but they require changes that are worth considering so that the company can develop in the right direction. In order to achieve this goal, it will be crucial to make the right technology decision, thanks to which all the objectives of the company could be achieved. No-Code and Low-Code technologies are suitable for this.

If you want to know more details on this topic, read our article on the most popular No-Code/Low-Code technologies.