Embrace Control, Unleash Potential: Keys to a Successful Citizen Developer Culture

Citizen development encourages a can-do attitude, empowering teams to deliver creative solutions to business problems. But not every organization is on board with citizen developers. During a recent MIT and HCLSoftware webinar, 46% of the audience expressed concern about their effect on governance, security and compliance.

These fears are understandable. After all, companies must prioritize protecting their data assets, networks and reputation. But it is possible to cultivate a citizen development culture without putting your organization at risk. There are platforms and tools that let employees unleash their creativity to solve problems in safe, governed environments.

Citizen development emerged as the low-code and no-code platforms enabled non-technical employees to build customized relevant applications.

One of the immediate benefits of citizen development is the accelerated time to deployment and eradication of the need for niche applications for various business tasks. It also promotes employee productivity and efficiency, freeing workers from grappling with time-consuming spreadsheets and inefficient email applications to do their jobs.

Top Advantages of a Citizen Developer Culture

Organizations that actively encourage citizen developers tell employees: “We trust you to come up with great ideas.” That puts the ball in their court to come up with unique improvements for workflows and processes. People on the frontlines of business often think of better ways to solve a problem than corner office occupants.

Citizen development fosters autonomy and a stronger sense of ownership, making people feel empowered at their jobs through meaningful contributions to the organization. As a result, employees are more likely to deliver innovative solutions that help all team members perform better.

By empowering your workforce, you also encourage diversity. You’re allowing more people to approach a problem from different perspectives. The benefits to any workplace or organization are clear: gains in productivity and efficiency as employees put their problem-solving skills and creativity to work.

Citizen developers can build custom apps in less time than it takes backlogged IT and development teams to create them. This allows IT and development teams to focus on bigger, more strategic work. In addition, everyone can get access to efficient, purpose-built apps instead of wasting time fighting the limitations of spreadsheets or collaboration software.

Citizen development also delivers personal growth. It empowers employees to develop high-demand skills they can use for career advancement in your organization. They become more marketable after learning their way around tools and platforms to create custom applications.

Pitfalls of Citizen Development

Organizations should keep their eyes open when starting on the citizen development route. It’s important to place guardrails around the strategy to discourage counterproductive practices. Without proper controls, citizen developers can exacerbate the problem of Shadow IT, which has plagued organizations since the introduction of software as a service (SaaS).

Shadow IT can also manifest itself in the form of uncontrolled app creation, with employees taking it upon themselves to devise workarounds to problems without any IT supervision. This can lead to security and compliance nightmares — the very things that make management hesitant about citizen development.

Another potential pitfall is the creation of data silos, which can lead to redundant processes and fragmented solutions that produce inconsistent data and duplication of effort. Those, in turn, can lead to “productivity purgatory”: citizen developers spending hours reinventing the wheel, unknowingly duplicating the work of others instead of focusing on their core competencies.

Avoiding the Pitfalls of Citizen Development

Citizen development unleashes creativity, but it can become too much of a good thing. By putting the right safeguards in place, your organization can manage potential risks. This way citizen development becomes a force for innovation and transformation in the Digital+ future.

Centralized Control

A low-code application development platform like HCL Volt MX lets you retrain centralized control of citizen developer activities for compliance and governance purposes without sacrificing their creativity. The industry-leading platform provides secure, IT-approved environments, so you don’t have to worry about rogue data copies or unapproved spending. With HCL Volt MX, IT maintains control of authenticating citizen developer apps.

More Apps

Low code empowers citizen developers to build tailored solutions, boosting productivity by liberating them from the limitations of spreadsheets and inefficient applications. But that’s not all. With HCL Volt MX, for example, those tailored solutions can be transformed into fully supported, professional-grade applications available across the enterprise.

Pro-Code

This platform also provides separate full-featured environments for citizen developers and professionals: An app created in the HCL Volt MX environment is validated by a professional developer. Although built for a specific task, it could be useful to other departments, so professional developers can easily add features to make it usable elsewhere in the organization.

Latest Tech Support

HCL Volt MX also provides native apps for mobile devices and supports the latest tech capabilities such as image capture and recognition and AR/VR. IT can create these apps by importing existing applications, as opposed to starting from scratch, and maintain them as long as they remain in use.

Improved Collaboration

A platform such as HCL Volt MX supports collaboration between citizen developers and professionals in a centralized, governed environment. It empowers teams across all levels and by supporting collaboration on apps, fosters interdepartmental communication and understanding.

A Key to Your Success

Great ideas can come from anywhere in the organization. It’s key to turn those ideas into action before they’re lost.

That’s where HCL Volt MX comes into play, with its support for your citizen developers AND a system of guardrails. By leveraging this low-code platform your organization stands to cultivate a citizen developer culture and thrive in a hyper-competitive Digital+ world.

Get started today!