Everyone’s learning to code nowadays, but the rise of low-code development platforms are putting application and solution creation capabilities in the hands of even the least programming-savvy employees to help close the IT skills gap, drive efficiency and greater productivity. Welcome to the world of the ‘citizen developer’.
Power to the people
In September 2015, QuickBase, an organisation that has developed a low-code platform to allow for citizen development of enterprise, surveyed 140 IT companies’ at its annual user conference and found that most were tapping into the expertise of citizen developers, ie business pros who create apps and technology solutions for their organisation without prior traditional coding skills. These professionals work together with IT to design apps tailored to their unique set of business and job role requirements to enable digital transformation and help reduce IT’s growing application backlog.
“There’s such a big skills gap in the marketplace, and so much competition for the opportunities in the coding space. But what we were surprised to find is that only 8% of the respondents say they have formal coding experience, but nearly 70% [68%] develop apps as part of their day job,” said Karen Devine, vice president of marketing, QuickBase.
The majority of traditional IT programmers responding to the survey (75%) indicated that they developed over three-quarters of the applications used and would then leave the last mile development, integration and deployment to their non-coder citizen developer colleagues, the survey revealed.
Cloud parallels
Much as the cloud enabled business users across departments to identify, evaluate and procure technology solutions without the involvement of IT, low-code development platforms are doing the same for applications and technology solutions, Devine said.
“You don’t have to know how to code – you need to know how to identify a problem or a process inefficiency, how to whiteboard a solution, how to drag-and-drop elements of different technologies to solve a problem. This is a major area of strength for millennials, especially, who are digital natives and just inherently turn to technology to solve these kinds of problems.”
Leveraging the talent of citizen developers helps drive greater operational efficiencies, boost RoI and free up IT to deliver on more strategic business objectives instead of working through Tier 1 support issues, hardware fixes and equipment replacements, for instance.
For quality-of-life services and facilities management company Sodexo, enabling citizen developers has been crucial for their rapid growth in the US market. Sodexo’s been able to quickly create an integrated suite of apps that could be developed, customised and deployed lightning-fast to manage an ever-increasing number of sites across the country.
“We don’t have to interrupt our IT department to build an application. We just need a good idea, collaboration from the end users and some productive quiet time,” said Bruce Squibb, senior director of programme development, Sodexo.
Citizen developers created solutions to support consistent execution of facilities management services, track and report data from more than 200 different locations, remain compliant with safety regulations, track quality assurance inspections and reduce risk by creating line-of-sight dashboards for various applications, without involving the IT department, saving time, energy and resources.
Busting the backlog
“There’s such a huge backlog in IT departments. You don’t want your IT professionals to be spending their days fixing field-naming conventions on an Excel spreadsheet for end users. You want them to be coding and conceptualising new technology, driving new innovations. It’s about finding the right person to solve the right problems at the right time with the right skills,” Devine said.
And many times, the people closest to the business, the end users who interact with technology solutions every day, are the best choice to identify and address bugs, inefficiencies and problems, Devine said. It’s a critical aspect of digital transformation and a way to enable more effective partnerships between IT and the business.
“What is IT uniquely great at? What can business users contribute? You have to take a long, hard look at how your resources are being used, and whether or not they’re being used in the right way. It’s also about skills development – people wanting to learn, grow and add new competencies.”
IDG News Service
Subscribers 0
Fans 0
Followers 0
Followers