Technology work is no longer the sole domain of IT specialists.
The proliferation of low-code and no-code tools in recent years fueled the rise of citizen developers, or non-tech employees who lead technology projects. The initiatives they work on — which include dedicated apps, automated workflows or data management tools — might have the blessing of IT, but aren’t led by IT.
Roughly 4 in 10 employees fall into the category Gartner describes as business technologists, or workers who report outside of IT departments but create technology or analytics capabilities. Forty-five percent of organizations reported that many or most of their non-IT employees were business technologists, according to a 2022 Gartner report.
Companies use citizen developers for a number of reasons. They reduce the burden on IT. They help non-tech employees solve problems relevant to their work, including finding more efficient ways of working.
But citizen developer programs also bring potential shadow IT initiatives — unauthorized IT projects — into the company’s umbrella of oversight. Successful citizen developer programs rely on having a clear governance and approval structure, and guardrails to ensure projects are safe and the outcomes are beneficial to the organization.
“It increases the scope of the technology projects that you can get done…it’s hard to hire IT resources, and … creates efficiency in the business that cuts down on person hours,” said Todd Florence, CIO and VP of IT at Estes Express Lines. The Richmond, Virginia-based freight transportation company uses an automation platform from Pegasystems that lets employees design and implement citizen development projects.
Automation focus
The types of projects citizen developers can lead vary in complexity. They could be tools that manage workflow, forms and manual processes as well as data management, using platforms that give non-specialists a streamlined path to develop applications.
Companies say a key area where citizen developers can make a difference is in the automation of manual processes. In 2021, Northern Trust determined it received 17 million emails a month through shared inboxes in its asset servicing business — a daunting inflow of messages that required manual review, routing and tasking within the organization.
The company needed to reduce the volume of email traffic, automatically route messages to those responsible and extract relevant information for transmission to various data platforms, according to Shaelyn Otikor-Miller, SVP and head of global digital workplace strategy for asset servicing at Northern Trust.
Using the Microsoft Power Platform, citizen developers created a system where emails, including attachments are automatically routed to internal document repositories and to individuals responsible, instead of having employees review each message upon receipt.
“They can create a [workflow] where every time I get this attachment from this client, save it down to this folder, then pick it up, plug it into this reporting capability,” she said. Implementation of a new system built by citizen developers reduced 70% of unnecessary email input in one department by the end of 2023.
Software providers have also reaped the benefits of automating process-heavy workflows.
Santa Clara, California-based ServiceNow uses an internally-developed App Engine platform to support citizen development. The company was able to automate its mailroom operations and streamline the appointment process for employees who needed to retrieve packages.
Prior to an automated solution built by citizen developers, mail room employees would have to individually email employees to set up package pickup times.
Within the past year, citizen developers “built a form, which more or less gets automatically triggered the moment they register that a package is received in an employee’s name,” said Jithin Bhasker, general manager and VP of App Engine at ServiceNow. The form triggers an automatic email to the employee, through which they can select a time, and mail employees could monitor all appointments through a central dashboard.
Other use cases include using robotic process automation bots to compare and match data stored within different systems during work orders. Estes Express Lines citizen developers, using Pega RPA bots, ensured details were consistent between operational systems and invoices and updates were automatically made as needed.
Citizen developers at Northern Trust also built tailored apps for point-in-time use cases, including a platform to record office attendance while implementing a return-to-office plan, said Otikor-Miller.
Placing guardrails
Companies say citizen developer programs should be designed in a way that gives employees autonomy to develop their own ideas, with built-in oversight. For example, citizen developers typically don’t code from scratch, instead building tools through approved developer platforms. They may also require some form of IT approval, consultation and oversight.
Northern Trust has three levels of staff that engage on citizen developer initiatives:
- Citizen developers themselves, or what the company calls the "green zone" team (employees who use low-code technology);
- The "orange zone," a workplace productivity team that liaises between citizen developers and IT colleagues;
- and the IT team, which is called the "red team."
While IT signs off on initiatives pitched by citizen developers, the organization that takes the lead can be determined by the complexity of the project in question.
One example of this, said Otikor-Miller, is a robotic process automation workflow that triggers processes to happen every day at a certain time. In these cases, the bot goes into the core system, downloads information and automatically plugs into a client portal.
“There’s not a human in the loop, so our IT team has to validate it,” she said. Citizen developers are not permitted to perform operations that are of “critical impact to the business” or that affect cash flows or market movements.
Similarly, at Estes, citizen developers are only allowed to improve on an existing system. A proposal to send data to an external system, for example, would require a discussion with IT. The objective is to cut down on cybersecurity risks, particularly when it involves employee or HR data, said Florence.
Another guardrail, apart from IT oversight and approval, is to rigorously test citizen developer tools before they are released for broader usage, said Bhasker.
The future of citizen development
The rollout of generative AI capabilities will likely make citizen developer tools accessible to a broader pool of employees by giving them a roadmap on how to use low-code or no-code tools, according to Jason Wong, distinguished VP analyst at Gartner.
Companies, including Northern Trust, Estes, ServiceNow and others, say they are exploring generative AI for citizen development uses.
In November 2023, ServiceNow rolled out a tool that lets citizen developers query a generative AI-based system, which can help citizen developers build new applications on the fly.
“You can simply type in an English statement, and it will build a process flow in a few minutes,” said Bhasker. “We are innovating on how we can make it very simple for anyone to just do a single prompt and it will build an application flow for you right there.”
As generative AI opens more avenues for citizen development, companies might change the way they look at recruiting new talent, some say.
“What will become more important over time than knowing the ins and outs of any specific technology will be understanding how to ask the right question,” said Florence, referring to generative AI. “You’ll start to see jobs that shift into less ‘I know how to do this thing’ and more ‘I know to think critically about this thing.’”
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Jithin Bhasker’s name and to indicate references to Northern Trust represent the broader company. The story was also updated to clarify 17 million emails were received across its asset servicing business and that citizen developers reduced 70% of unnecessary email input in one department of Northern Trust.
