What is a Citizen Developer?

AI assistants can now generate programs from a description in natural language. This approach is called vibe coding, and it also significantly lowers the barrier to building your own software. Unlike a no-code platform, however, it produces real program code: reviewing, hosting, updating and maintaining it falls to your own team, and troubleshooting requires programming knowledge.

For Citizen Developers, this means that AI speeds up getting started, but it does not replace the guard rails of a platform, approvals and collaboration with IT. How the three approaches differ is explained in the comparison Low-code vs. no-code vs. vibe coding.

In manufacturing, Citizen Developers are the experts on the shop floor: shift supervisors, maintenance, quality assurance, work preparation and production planning. They know machines, processes and KPIs from their daily work and know exactly where paper lists, spreadsheets or missing information cost time and which processes can be automated.

This knowledge is particularly valuable in manufacturing companies, because IT specialists are scarce and corporate IT is busy with the ERP system, network and security. With no-code tools for manufacturing, employees build small apps and process automations themselves instead of waiting for an IT software project. The data comes directly from controllers, sensors and business software.

Typical apps that Citizen Developers build in manufacturing:

Enabling a Citizen Developer to develop applications independently despite a lack of programming knowledge requires the use of special development environments: so-called low-code and no-code platforms.

These offer the possibility of creating automated workflows and other components of applications using graphical tools. Low-code platforms usually require some prior programming knowledge (such as scripts, APIs or similar), while no-code platforms completely eliminate the need for any code input.

As the concepts of “low-code”, “no-code” and “Citizen Development” are closely related, we will explain the differences between low-code and no-code platforms in more detail below.

Low-code platform

Low-code platforms are slightly more complex and require at least a little technical knowledge (or appropriate training). In some cases, scripts, special commands or other technical inputs such as connection data are required. Many low-code platforms offer documentation for more advanced configurations. Low-code platforms also tend to rely on visual tools to a large extent and, in the best case, offer intuitive operation in order to quickly implement even complex applications.

No-code platform

No-code development environments or platforms do not require any code input from the user. Instead, visual user interfaces and tools such as drag-and-drop editors are available. Ideally, a no-code platform requires no prior knowledge and enables intuitive operation. This allows a Citizen Developer to concentrate fully on implementing the functional requirements, while the technical implementation remains hidden in the background. Several applications or workflows can often be created in a relatively short period of time.

Both low-code and no-code development environments are often provided in the cloud.

In the previous sections, we have explained why the use of Citizen Developers can result in numerous (economic) benefits for a company.

Nevertheless, there are important aspects that need to be considered when implementing a Citizen Development approach in order to avoid risks, security gaps, integration difficulties and other undesirable effects.

Most of these fall into the area of IT governance. In practice, this means integrating Citizen Development into the company’s overall IT strategy, while ensuring that all predefined requirements for security, transparency, documentation, etc. are met.

Close cooperation with the IT department and other experts

Even if corporate IT is relieved by Citizen Developers, there is still a need for close cooperation.

The development environments used (low-code/no-code) and the resulting applications should be checked by the IT department for their quality, compatibility and security.

Training for Citizen Developers is necessary to ensure that the required skills are available and that application development is carried out according to defined criteria.

Furthermore, the completely independent development of applications by a single Citizen Developer is neither common nor effective. Just as with traditional programming, applications are developed in collaboration with team members, managers, data protection and security experts.

Citizen Development is sometimes associated with the term shadow IT. Shadow IT is when software applications are used without the knowledge and control of the IT department. In a Citizen Development concept, this should be avoided at all costs.

The difference lies not in the person, but in the control: shadow IT arises when business departments use their own spreadsheets, scripts or cloud services without the knowledge of IT. Citizen Development, by contrast, takes place on a platform that IT has selected and oversees. Introduced properly, Citizen Development is therefore even a remedy for shadow IT, because employees get an official route to their own software.

The graphic shows an example of this route: an application goes through development, acceptance by the business department and approval before it goes live in production.

Surveys show that many companies have been using Citizen Developers for years already – a development that is supported by the shortage of IT specialists and the availability of powerful low-code and no-code platforms.

Good planning and functioning communication structures are necessary in order to maximize the benefits of Citizen Development and at the same time avoid security deficits and a lack of transparency. Both the development and provision of low-code and no-code platforms as well as application development by Citizen Developers should be carried out in accordance with the highest quality and security standards.

In this article, we have summarized the most important advantages and challenges of Citizen Development. If you would like to know what a specialized no-code platform looks like in practice, you can find out more about manubes – our innovative cloud platform for industrial production management – on this website.