A Complete Guide to Citizen Development: Role, Benefits, and Importance [Updated for 2025]

The inevitable changes in the corporate environment force enterprises to revisit their business strategies every now and then. With companies undergoing constant digital transformation, CIOs face severe pressure to digitize and modify existing operations, resulting in IT backlogs. Here’s where citizen development comes to the rescue.

Citizen-led development has been adopted by companies across the world, as it provides non-IT experts with the appropriate technology and IT support to build the basic apps they need. When employees build their own apps, they perform their jobs more efficiently, reduce the company’s operating costs, and lessen the IT backlog.

It speeds up app development, cuts costs, and improves productivity and work effectiveness by making application development faster and less costly.

There’s a growing need for citizen application development in every organization. However, IT departments can’t build new apps on time because they have a huge backlog of work. This means even simple apps take months or years to build. For this reason, businesses around the world have started using no-code and low-code platforms that allow citizen developers to build software in days and weeks.

What is citizen development?

Citizen development is a process where non-IT employees, known as citizen developers, use low-code/no-code platforms to create business applications. These applications are created without extensive coding knowledge and are approved and supported by IT departments to ensure they meet security and compliance standards.

This differentiates the meaning of citizen development from shadow IT. Citizen developers are non-IT experts who seek solutions for their unique problems and use low-code/no-code to create the solutions themselves.

As digital agility continues to advance, more employees are becoming citizen developers and creating applications on their own. In many organizations, citizen developers are found in departments like HR, research & development, finance, and customer service.

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What does a citizen developer do?

Citizen developers build applications to solve business problems with the backing of IT. They use no-code and low-code app development tools to build new business applications for consumption by themselves and other employees. They have a profound knowledge of an organization's or a department’s processes and also possess advanced digital skills. This allows them to create efficient business apps and automate workflows easily with the help of citizen automation.

Citizen developers are different from professional developers who use pro code to build solutions. Pro code platforms rely only on code, while no-code systems have a Graphical User Interface that allows users to build solutions without coding.

Learn more: Citizen Developers vs Professional Developers

Why do you need citizen development in an organization?

In most organizations, IT departments have such a huge backlog of work they don’t respond to new requests promptly. They are overwhelmed by an unending request pipeline and keeping up is impossible. This is where the need for citizen-led development comes in.

• 71% of business leaders agree that IT teams have a lot of new solution requests they aren’t working on.
• A study by 451 Research revealed that integrating low-code/no-code tools can boost development efficiency by 50%-90%.
• 41% of respondents have active citizen development programs, while 20% plan to start them.
• By 2023, the number of citizen developers will be four times more than that of professional developers

According to a Gartner report, many organizations have active citizen development initiatives or plan to have them. Business users can create innovative, time-saving apps for their organizations using no-code or low-code platforms.

Learn more: Citizen Development Stats and Trends to Watch in 2024

What are the skills required for a citizen developer?

To build an effective citizen development model, here are four essential skills that business users must possess:

1. Complete know-how of business operations

2. Enhanced level of digital skills

3. Ability to collaborate with inter-departments

4. Highly motivated to upskill

Complete know-how of business operations

To build efficient business apps, a citizen developer must have in-depth knowledge of various business processes, their inefficiencies, and bottlenecks. This will help them analyze and create the right processes and apps that are aligned with their organizational goals.

Enhanced level of digital skills

To ensure a sustainable citizen development framework, a profound knowledge of business processes must be combined with advanced levels of digital skills. This includes being conversant with workflow analytics, document generation, and no-code bot automation.

Ability to collaborate with inter-departments

One of the main focuses of low-code and no-code platforms is to maximize citizen developers across departments. In such a case, a citizen developer must act as a link, ensuring seamless collaboration between business and IT, to collectively achieve organizational objectives.

Highly motivated to upskill

The concept of citizen development is recently picking up, paving the way for the digital revolution. In that case, being motivated to upskill is important and the business users must take the initiative to self-educate themselves and master the no-code skills.

How to create a citizen development framework?

Citizen development can help your organization significantly boost productivity, process automation, and app development speed. But for citizen developers to deliver great results, there must be a citizen developer framework in place. Use this framework to empower your citizen developers.

Choose the best no-code/low-code platform

Pick the best tool for your business based on its functionality, use cases, and how well your organization will adopt it.

Work with the service vendor

The service vendor can train the citizen programmers on how to use the platform. This can be on a one-off basis or continuous.

Explore hyper agility

Combine intelligent automation with agile business practices to evolve your operations as quickly as possible and with complete accuracy.

Empower no-code developers

Foster mentorship and ongoing support from IT. The IT team will need to monitor the application development process.

Maintain proper governance of shadow IT

Discourage citizen developers from using systems, apps, and services disapproved by the IT team.

Learn more: Why Do You Need Governance In Citizen Development?

What are the benefits of citizen development?

Citizen development helps in building business agility and enhances sustainability. Some of the top benefits of implementing citizen development in an organization are,

• Innovation and Efficiency

• Speed

• Reduces the Risk of Shadow IT

• Cost-Effective

Innovation and efficiency

The world of application development is growing day by day. A company that wants to keep up must create new applications regularly. LCNC and citizen development enable organizations to build apps that adapt to new requirements, and market demands much faster than before. Citizen application development motivates innovation and fosters creative thinking.

Speed

Citizen development reduces the time it takes to launch new apps. For example, citizen developers updating an app can get feedback directly from their colleagues who use the app. If something needs fixing, they can handle the adjustments independently. Non-IT experts understand business needs and challenges, so the solutions they build usually address problems better and offer an enhanced customer experience.

Reduces the risk of shadow IT

Shadow IT happens when employees go outside IT-sanctioned boundaries to do their work. When non-IT employees are given the tools to develop their own solutions, they can create viable solutions within the IT-approved space. Because they have the tools they need to make their ideas a reality, there’s improved process efficiency. This yields higher overall business productivity.

Cost-effective

Building apps using citizen developers lower development costs. Apps can be created a lot quicker, sometimes in days instead of months. Less coding means less time spent on app development, which results in lower costs. Also, providing non-IT experts with the tools, support, and training needed to build new apps is more affordable than outsourcing.

Professional developer vs. citizen developer

Professional developers have in-depth technical knowledge and experience in building, maintaining, and upgrading applications for businesses. They employ their coding skills to develop custom, complex, and scalable applications.

Citizen developers are business users who don’t have any coding experience, but they leverage low-code/no-code platform with visual interfaces and drag-and-drop editors to build applications without any coding.

Instead of choosing one over the other, businesses are now involving both professional and citizen developers in the app-building process to manage the growing demand, speed up app development, and cut costs.

Who are citizen integrators and how are they different from citizen developers?

Citizen integrators are business users who want to integrate applications and data faster without the help of an IT team. Nowadays, many companies are using non-technical persons who are tech savvy and are interested in software and data integration tools to move integration projects quickly. Citizen integrators use drag-and-drop interfaces to do tasks with ease.

Citizen integrators integrate data between IT teams and business users, whereas citizen developers create applications without the help of IT. Nowadays, IT teams are under much pressure due to huge backlogs, and hence, citizen integrators use tools that are used to integrate without the help of the IT department to accomplish tasks.

Examples of citizen integrators

Some examples of citizen integrators are,

• Customer Support Manager
• Finance Specialist
• Sales Manager
• Outreach Specialist
• Marketing Lead

How Kissflow can embrace your citizen development journey

IT departments in most companies are overwhelmed. They have a huge backlog, and new requests for solutions never seem to stop. That’s why empowering citizen developers is important. They promise a solution to both budget and staffing woes, and all they need is a good citizen development platform.

Kissflow's low-code platform is an easy-to-use work platform that can help business users quickly become citizen developers. Its visual drag-and-drop form builder and pre-built templates allow business users to streamline workflows and build custom business apps with minimal to no coding. While Kissflow allows business users to build applications independently, IT still controls and governs the data to ensure security and compliance.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on Citizen Development

1. What is Citizen Development?

Answer:
Citizen development is a business process that enables non-IT employees (also known as citizen developers) to create business applications using low-code/no-code platforms. These platforms allow employees to build apps and workflows with minimal or no coding experience, while ensuring that the applications are approved and governed by IT to maintain compliance and security standards.

2. What is the Role of IT in Citizen Development?

The role of IT departments in citizen development is to provide oversight, ensure governance, and maintain security while empowering non-IT employees to build applications. IT's responsibilities include:

1. Establishing guidelines for using low-code/no-code platforms.
2. Reviewing and approving applications to ensure they meet security, compliance, and integration standards.
3. Providing training and support to citizen developers.
4. Monitoring applications for performance and security risks.
5. Ensuring seamless integration between citizen-built apps and existing enterprise systems.

3. Why Should Businesses Encourage Citizen Development?

Businesses should encourage citizen development for several key reasons:

1. Accelerated innovation: Empowering employees to create their own solutions fosters creativity and faster problem-solving.
2. Cost savings: Citizen development reduces reliance on costly IT resources and accelerates time-to-market for new apps.
3. Increased agility: Non-technical employees can quickly build and adapt applications to meet changing business needs.
4. Enhanced productivity: Automating repetitive tasks and creating custom solutions increases overall operational efficiency.
5. IT resource optimization: By offloading simple app development tasks to citizen developers, IT teams can focus on more complex and strategic initiatives.

4. What Are the Benefits of Citizen Development for Businesses?

Citizen development provides several key benefits to businesses:

• Faster app development: Non-technical employees can quickly create solutions without waiting for IT teams.
• Cost savings: Reduces the need for expensive custom software development and IT resources.
• Increased innovation: Empowers employees to solve problems in creative ways using business-specific knowledge.
• Improved productivity: Automates repetitive tasks and streamlines workflows, improving efficiency across the organization.

5. What Are the Risks of Citizen Development?

While citizen development offers many advantages, there are risks to consider:

• Lack of governance: Without proper oversight, applications may lack consistency or security.
• Security vulnerabilities: Citizen-developed apps may not meet company security standards.
• Integration issues: Apps built outside the IT framework may have trouble integrating with existing systems.
• Compliance concerns: Applications created by non-IT employees might not adhere to industry regulations.

6. How Can IT Ensure Governance in Citizen Development?

IT departments can ensure governance in citizen development by:

• Setting clear guidelines for the use of low-code/no-code tools.
• Establishing approval workflows for any citizen-built applications.
• Monitoring and reviewing applications for security, compliance, and functionality.
• Providing training to citizen developers on best practices, security standards, and application lifecycle management.

7. What Skills Do Citizen Developers Need?

While citizen developers do not need formal coding skills, they should possess:

• Problem-solving abilities to identify business challenges that can be solved with technology.
• Basic knowledge of workflows and data to understand how to design applications that streamline processes.
• Familiarity with low-code/no-code platforms to utilize the features of these tools effectively.
• Collaboration skills to work with IT and other teams to ensure that applications meet business and technical requirements.

8. How Can Businesses Get Started with Citizen Development?

To get started with citizen development, businesses should:

1. Select the right low-code/no-code platform that fits the organization's needs.
2. Train non-technical employees on how to use these platforms to create applications.
3. Establish clear governance protocols and IT oversight to ensure security and compliance.
4. Start with small projects to build confidence and prove the value of citizen development.
5. Create a feedback loop for continuous improvement and innovation.

9. What Types of Applications Can Be Built Through Citizen Development?

Citizen developers can create a variety of business applications, including:

• Workflow automation: Streamlining manual tasks such as approvals and document routing.
• Data management: Creating custom databases and dashboards for tracking business performance.
• Customer-facing apps: Building client portals, mobile apps, or service request forms.
• Internal Apps: Developing employee tools for HR, finance, or case management.

10. What Are Low-Code/No-Code Platforms for Citizen Development?

Low-code/no-code platforms are software tools that enable non-technical users (also known as citizen developers) to create applications with minimal or no coding. These platforms offer drag-and-drop interfaces, pre-built templates, and visual workflows, making it easy to design and deploy business applications. Examples of popular low-code/no-code platforms include Kissflow, OutSystems, Mendix, and Zoho Creator. They are often used for automating business processes, managing data, and creating customer-facing applications, all without requiring extensive programming skills.

11. Why Should Businesses Encourage Citizen Development?
Businesses should encourage citizen development for several key reasons:

1. Accelerated innovation: Empowering employees to create their own solutions fosters creativity and faster problem-solving.
2. Cost savings: Citizen development reduces reliance on costly IT resources and accelerates time-to-market for new apps.
3. Increased agility: Non-technical employees can quickly build and adapt applications to meet changing business needs.
4. Enhanced productivity: Automating repetitive tasks and creating custom solutions increases overall operational efficiency.
5. IT resource optimization: By offloading simple app development tasks to citizen developers, IT teams can focus on more complex and strategic initiatives.