In the last few years, the most progressive and innovative entrepreneurs have invested in a ‘secret weapon’ that has helped them thrive. They’ve harnessed the power of this weapon and have been reaping the benefits since — an overall increase in innovation and agility. The secret weapon: citizen developers.
Citizen developers are people who create applications to address personal or business issues. The best ones have intimate knowledge of business processes and are able to address which issues can be solved through IT solutions. They don’t necessarily have any formal training in software development and create their applications through no code platforms such as MVP.dev.
Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Citizen Developer?
We’ve established that citizen developers don’t have to be as experienced as actual software engineers. Just like Chef Gusteau believed that anyone can cook, we at MVP.dev believe that anyone can be a citizen developer and that a citizen developer can come from any department.
Take a look at these questions and see if you’ve got what it takes.
- Do you often recognize gaps in business that can be bridged through IT solutions?
- Do you like finding creative, innovative ways to fix problems?
- Do you like learning new concepts, methods, and trends in tech?
- Do you like teaching yourself new things even though they may be challenging?
If you answered yes to most or all of these questions, there’s no doubt you’ve got the makings of a citizen developer. This might be a bit of an oversimplification, but if you have a substantial knowledge of your own business processes and are keen on finding solutions, then you’re 100% on the right track.
However, there is a caveat — anyone can be a citizen developer, but it takes the right no code platform for them to realize this potential. No code platforms like Bubble.io are fantastic for quickly creating fully functioning applications and minimum viable products extremely affordable.
What’s In It For The Business?
If you haven’t yet invested in citizen developers, take a look at all the ways your business can benefit from them.
Give the IT Department Much Needed Room to Breathe
Organizations will only opt to digitize more and more of their operations — this is inevitable. Employees and end-users will also expect better solutions to aid their tasks as well, and they expect – in fact oftentimes push – for these solutions to be deployed quickly. Your business’s IT team will have to keep up with this need for new solutions. Without citizen developers, your IT staff will almost certainly drown in work.
Since citizen developers have such an intimate knowledge of business processes, who better find creative solutions to improve operations?
Become More Agile
Business agility refers to an organization’s ability to adapt to market changes and emerging opportunities. Specifically, this entails spotting broken applications, outdated processes, faster application development and deployment, and an overall improvement in efficiency. Naturally, the more agile a business, the more it thrives in the digital age.
With the help of citizen developers, improvements and innovations are created and implemented much more efficiently. They can spot problems and deal with them in no time as opposed to having to go through another department for help.
Engage, Empower, and Satisfy Employees
Because IT staff are often overworked, when employees turn to them for help, they’re often unsatisfied with the end result. Either it isn’t 100% what they need or the turnaround time is just too long.
The lack of opportunity to do things themselves contributes greatly to employees feeling disengaged from work. And we’ve all seen this before. The more disengaged the employees, the more negativity is spread. Morale is down, and this often leads to the business losing more money than its making.
Allowing your employees to create solutions themselves fosters an environment of autonomy and creativity. Since they’re creating solutions to problems they face, they know exactly what needs to be done. With the right no code platform, they’ll be able to create exactly what they’re looking for. Additionally, you should never underestimate the effect of seeing one’s work on display. This could just be the motivation your employees need.
What’s Next?
Utilizing citizen developers is the obvious choice. The most logical solution to meet the ever-increasing demands of digitization is to empower one’s own people to create solutions themselves.
If you’re looking for a no code platform to help shape the best citizen developers, we’re the team to partner with.
