“Not too many business users (accountants, accounting managers, financial execs and the like) really know how to program in Java, Ruby, C++, or how to work within a .NET framework. But yet, technology skills are so important to them that 68% consider “developing apps” to be part of their daily routines.”
That’s the take from a recent ZDNet report, which explores the emerging world of the “citizen developer.”
ZDNet’s story is in part based on one of the findings from Intuit QuickBase’s latest survey of 148 of their customers. Turns out 21 percent self-identified as IT developers, and 76 percent as “citizen developers.”
In sum, though a mere eight percent understand programming languages and development platforms, a good majority “are involved in some way building apps, at least at the front end.”
What kind of apps? Of course, they’re business-related, from “get-the-work-done” apps (65 percent) to “run-the-business” apps (42 percent).
“The bottom line: it’s one less thing for IT to worry about,” notes ZDNet. “Plus, IT professionals are not being left out of the process either, the study’s authors point out. The majority (75 percent) of IT builders indicated that they developed over three quarters of the applications and leave the last mile to their non-coder citizen developer colleagues. In fact, it’s this prototyping process between IT and the business that represents the paradigm shift.”
The report’s authors give kudos to the citizen developers working with their IT departments.
“As digital transformation continues to heap an ever-growing backlog of application requests on their doorsteps, using existing legacy applications and high priced IT professionals and coders is not sustainable. This is why organizations are starting to turn to internal resources, true citizen developers, who have been trained to solve business problems rather than learn programming languages.”
