“Unlocking Success: The Power of Citizen Development in Enterprise Digital Transformation”
In today’s competitive landscape, customers’ demands are soaring, profit margins are shrinking, and employees are seeking more efficient work methods. Shadow IT poses a constant risk to businesses. While technology offers a lifeline, enterprise organizations are grappling with the complex challenge of successfully transforming their workflows and processes. The IT backlog is at an all-time high, and recruiting and retaining software engineers has become increasingly difficult. Teams are under pressure to deliver more with fewer resources.
To surmount these challenges, enterprises should turn to citizen developers. Citizen development provides a way to scale digital solutions, reduce the IT backlog, and execute successful organizational transformations.
Why Do 70% of Enterprise Digital Transformations Fail?
Numerous enterprise digital transformation projects fall short due to unrealistic expectations. Understanding the root causes of these failures is crucial for organizations to plan effectively and achieve success. Here are the common reasons why digital transformations falter:
- Ignoring Root Problems: Failing to address underlying issues.
- No Strategy or Goal: Lack of a clear transformation plan.
- Weak ROI: Inadequate return on investment.
- Doing Too Much, Too Quickly: Overambitious undertakings.
- Inexperienced Teams: Insufficient expertise.
- Resistance to Change: Opposition to new methods.
- Inadequate Technology Infrastructure: Tech limitations.
- Lack of Leadership Support: Absence of top-tier backing.
Embracing the Benefits of Enterprise Digital Transformation
Enterprise digital transformations offer remarkable advantages by facilitating seamless data flow between systems. This eradicates data silos, resulting in cleaner and more actionable information, empowering teams to better understand customers. The outcome? Superior services and products. Teams can dedicate more time to innovation and identifying unique opportunities. Digital transformations also foster effortless collaboration among teams, allowing stakeholders to act on accurate data, boosting business value, and maintaining competitiveness.
Exploring Citizen Development: Empowering Business Users
Citizen development signifies a shift towards business users, rather than IT teams, constructing custom applications, integrations, and automation to support digital transformation goals. These citizen developers employ low-code/no-code tools, bypassing the need for a software engineering background. Instead of overwhelming IT teams with endless requests, citizen developers take an active role in application development.
How Citizen Developers Drive Digital Transformation
The creation of digital solutions necessitates substantial resources. However, in today’s challenging economic climate and amidst the software engineer shortage, citizen development offers a more affordable route to the same results as traditional application development. Citizen developers can leverage their business acumen, rather than developer expertise, to design solutions.
Citizen development provides value in three key areas: expediting application development, encouraging innovation, and reducing shadow IT. In essence, citizen development extends the capabilities of your IT team by delegating lower-level application development tasks to team members who balance their regular responsibilities with citizen development. This approach streamlines how work is conducted.
Executing an Enterprise-Level Citizen Development Program
Building a successful citizen development program requires a methodical approach. Defining a clear mission, goals, and key performance indicators (KPIs) based on data is essential. Gaining support from leadership and stakeholders is the first step. Establishing a Center of Excellence (CoE) ensures consistent quality across the organization and provides resources for citizen developers to upskill.
Investing in upskilling for your citizen developers is vital, as it bridges the gap in their professional development knowledge. Choosing the right low-code platform and launching a pilot program is a gradual process, avoiding the pitfall of trying to accomplish too much too quickly. Adaptability is key, as your team must remain flexible in a dynamic environment.
Navigating Challenges and Addressing Misconceptions
Citizen development does come with its challenges, including issues like poor quality apps, duplicate apps, unnecessary apps, and unused apps. However, a well-structured citizen development program with IT oversight, training, and guidelines can mitigate these challenges.
Addressing misconceptions about citizen development is vital for its success. It is an extension of IT and doesn’t replace professional developers; it complements their efforts. By investing in citizen developers, organizations can empower them to build high-quality, secure applications while reducing the IT backlog and enhancing retention rates.
The Crucial Role of Citizen Development in Enterprise Digital Transformation
In a digital marketplace, the ability to transform and adapt is essential for remaining competitive. Citizen development empowers organizations to become agile and responsive to market changes by leveraging accurate data streams. It does so without overwhelming the team. In this digital era, survival depends on having a digital team capable of building the business customers expect today and tomorrow.
