9 Ways Citizen Developers are Changing the Software Landscape

2016 saw the rise of the citizen developer, blurring the lines between creators and users. How will this new breed impact the software development industry?

More than half of organizations engaged in citizen development report that application builders are able to create applications in less than two weeks. Additionally, 42 percent of citizen developers are developing applications at least twice as fast compared to traditional development.

Citizen development is being used for all types and tiers of applications. Applications designed by citizen developers for mission-critical and long-term use (such as Enterprise Resource Planning and supply chain management) rose slightly to 45 percent in 2016.

Building and maintaining applications has become more central to the way line-of-business professionals do their jobs. According to the Quickbase report, 76 percent of citizen developers consider developing applications as part of their day job, up from 68 percent last year.

On average, organizations estimate that a platform supporting some portion of development by line-of-business developers could be used to build 26 different types of applications. IT help desk, project, asset and workforce management were selected among the top use cases for no-code development by survey respondents.

The customer experience now more than ever is a key business driver. Applications must adapt easily and quickly to reflect rapidly changing customer needs. This year, citizen developers at 35 percent of organizations report building customer-facing web and mobile applications, up from 27 percent in 2015.

For IT developers, trying to keep up with demand for custom applications is a never-ending battle that often generates a large monthly backlog of unfulfilled requests. Citizen development platforms reduced backlog by 65 percent on average, compared to traditional development platforms, helping IT meet its service level agreements (SLAs).

Citizen developers are found in lines of business 79 percent of the time, according to the survey. Other areas where these app builders most commonly reside are central services (62 percent) and central IT (39 percent).

The spread of citizen development has created opportunities for IT and the business to collaborate — and ultimately build better apps to an exact set of specifications or process. This, in turn, drives higher operational efficiency and team productivity. According to survey respondents, a business-led collaboration method is most common (62 percent of organizations), under which citizen developers take primary responsibility in the app-building process, requesting help from IT only as needed.

Though citizen developers use tools that don’t require coding, not all are without technical ability. Application builders involved in citizen development have an expanding set of technical skills that enable them to create applications ranging from simple workflows to more mission-critical or externally facing applications. Front- or back-end scripting skills now can be found in 44 percent of application builders, up from just 36 percent in 2015.