The rise and potential fall of the citizen developer

During the past few years, there has been a lot of talk about citizen developers, which, in the simplest of terms, means that regular business employees can build their software applications without involving specialist IT staff. It should be apparent to readers of KMWorld that information professionals ought to be first in line to become citizen developers. But creating business applications is not a trivial pursuit. Fortunately, hand in hand with the concept of citizen developers come lowand no-code systems that, as the names imply, require no or minimal coding. It’s a great idea that promises to allow those with hands-on understanding of specific business needs to create applications without involving the IT department. Done well, information and knowledge management practitioners can build many simple but practical applications, from routing users to the correct resources to automating repetitive tasks.

The citizen developer movement was heralded as a revolution. Like most revolutions, things have sometimes gone differently than planned. The logic is sound, empowering those who know the business best to build the tools and systems needed to do their job. Plus, who hasn’t asked IT staff to build or fix something simple and waited months for them to get the job done? Worse still, most of us have experienced IT delivering poorly thought-out software applications that hinder rather than help. The chance to free a business from the tyranny of its IT department seems like an opportunity to be seized with both hands. Ah, if only things were that simple …

Possible downsides of citizen development

During the past couple of years, our analysts have spoken with countless system integrators, heads of IT departments, and consultancies, and all tell the same story: Citizen developers may sound like a good idea, but in practice, it can turn out to be a recipe for disaster. Minimizing the complexity of developing software applications (removing the need to write lines of code) does not address the complexity of the core technology or the business process. Instead, it can mask the underlying complexity that, like it or not, must be dealt with. The fundamental problem is that citizen developers typically lack an understanding of IT security principles, frameworks, testing methods, and procedures. The result can be a sprawl of unmaintained, poor-functioning, and high-risk applications. Or, as one IT director called it, “Shadow IT on steroids.”

If you have read this far, you will likely be under the impression that I am firmly against citizen developers and believe that the concept of citizen development is a bad idea. You would be way off the mark. In fact, the lessons being learned the hard way in the world of citizen developers provide us with a number of excellent teachable moments. Information and KM professionals are starting to get a clear picture, at least in part, of the forks in the road and the success paths that we should be taking.