It’s an unprecedented time to be a CIO or any technology
leader. On the one hand, technology organizations are working hard on digital
transformation and developing many new customer and employee-facing
applications. On the other, IT is now running double duty by supporting more remote
working employees and then responding to other COVID-19
business needs.
There’s never been greater demand on IT to rapidly deliver
easier to use, integrated, reliable, and secure applications. Once delivered,
business users expect that IT teams update applications regularly and support them efficiently.
When SaaS or Homegrown Applications Aren’t Viable Options
Let’s review IT’s options for fulfilling departmental
application needs or responding to opportunities that require rapid
development.
For example, many organizations require new
applications for crisis response, such as managing new types of requests,
tracking assets deployed to remote workers, and increasing communications with
employees.
Other times, departments need small applications to
supplement core solutions. For example, many
HR departments develop central portals to link different SaaS tools and
publish HR-related information. Beyond these basics, many want to add
specialized tools for scheduling
employee training, tracking
job candidates, or managing
the talent recruitment process
Business and IT leaders often seek out SaaS and enterprise
solutions to cover the most strategic needs. Individual departments may also pursue
SaaS solutions, but there may not be viable options if workflows are
proprietary or episodic. There are also additional costs and risks to
organizations evaluating, administering, integrating, and supporting a large
number of SaaS applications.
The second option is to develop homegrown applications, but
that requires devoting precious IT talent to build, support, and enhance them.
Business teams often require a strong rationale to justify developing homegrown
applications with the IT department, and that assumes IT has the staffing,
skills, and platforms for delivering homegrown solutions. Many business needs
aren’t strategically important enough to warrant an IT investment, and IT may
not have sufficient time to develop apps when responding to crises or
fast-moving opportunities.
That leaves an undesirable third option where business teams
are left to fend for themselves. Some may pursue rogue IT solutions, but more
often, these departments clobber together workflows with manual workarounds and
using a mix of email, spreadsheets, virtual meetings, chat functions, shared
file systems, and other tools.
Embracing Citizen Developed Applications to Empower the Workforce
Instead of saying no to these business demands, progressive
IT teams are embracing
shadow IT, partnering with business leaders on driving workforce
enablement, and encouraging
citizen development
Citizen
development on a low-code
platform offers a paradigm shift to how smarter and faster organizations
develop and support applications. Instead of IT building and supporting them, IT
provides the tools, practices, and knowledge to individuals in each department
that are interested in applying technologies to solve business challenges. These
citizen developers are already subject matter experts on their department’s
business needs, workflows, and internal lingo. With some technical acumen and
basic training, they can easily translate these business needs into practical
applications. Citizen developers can also integrate low-code applications and automate
workflows between SaaS platforms such as Slack, MailChimp, SalesForce,
Marketo, Workday, and Zuora.
In fact, citizen developers are often more successful
converting email and spreadsheet workflows into applications because they
understand the working paradigm. It’s a faster and more efficient development
process because the workflow doesn’t need translation into technical
requirements or require dedicated cloud infrastructure. Additionally, the
citizen developer often has deeper relationships and more clout in their
department and thus are often more successful in gaining end-user adoption of
the workflows and tools they develop.
Governing Citizen Developed Application with an IT Center of Excellence
CIO and IT leaders fearful of losing technical controls by
handing off some application development and support responsibilities to citizen
developers should develop governance and support models. Instead of saying no
or letting these become shadow IT programs, IT organizations have the
opportunity to partner with citizen developers and their business leaders on
programs that deliver efficiencies and innovation.
I’ve been helping establish
citizen development programs for over twenty years, first as a CTO in startups,
then as a CIO in enterprises, and now with clients as President of StarCIO. The
best IT departments have a deeper knowledge of supporting innovation programs,
agile development, data governance, information security, and software
development lifecycles. Their challenge is to share appropriate levels of this
knowledge with citizen developers in the form of defining basic governance and
establishing centers of excellence.
Here are five places to start:
- Help citizen developers plan their applications before building them. All developers,
including citizen developers, enjoy jumping right into developing applications.
But the most successful ones quickly brainstorm user personas, end-user roles,
workflows, data requirements, integrations, and basic reporting needs to shape
the application design. IT
should help citizen developers plan these steps and develop basic
artifacts before jumping into building applications.
- Review
plans for architecture and data governance. To avoid creating siloes
applications, experienced engineers should help support citizen developers
connect to shared resources, including APIs and reference data. New
applications should follow naming conventions and patterns recommended by IT’s
citizen development center of excellence.
- Develop
best practices on integrating with enterprise and SaaS solutions. Whether
you’re using Salesforce, SAP, MailChimp, or Slack, and using integration tools
like Zapier, Workato, or Boomi, defining a strategy
for application integrations is a critical success factor. For some types
of integrations, IT may empower citizen developers to implement the integration
while others are better instrumented directly with IT’s involvement.
- Drive
standard platform and application security configurations. The security
review should start with selecting an enterprise-ready
citizen development platform that supports compliance certifications such
as SOC 1 / SOC2, HIPAA, EU-US Privacy Shield, and DFARS. Also, CISOs or infosec
leaders should review the platform’s
security assurances, data encryption, role-based administration controls,
and SAML
authentication options. When it comes to application development,
identifying a standard approach for defining groups, roles, and access rights
enables IT to administrate a growing portfolio of citizen developed
applications more easily.
- Educate
and define version control, application testing, and release management
practices. Some of the same rules in application development should apply
to citizen developed applications, but citizen developers are unlikely to know
the best practices. IT should partner with citizen developers to share
knowledge and define practices for developing, testing, and releasing
applications so that end-users are not surprised or disrupted by changes.
Citizen Development Enables Digital Transformation
While there are many aspects to how organizations define a
digital strategy, digital transformation programs almost always require
modernizing how work gets done and enabling the workforce with productive, easy-to-use
technologies.
CIO and IT leaders can accelerate their transformation
programs by sponsoring citizen development programs. Instead of just enabling
the workforce, IT empowers a department’s citizen developers by directly getting
them involved in the transformation.
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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the
author and do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Quick Base.
