Unleashing the Potential of Citizen Developers on the No-Code Wave

The growing demand for application development has paved the way for the rise of citizen developers, prompting DevOps teams to design strategies that support their endeavors. During the recent virtual TechStrongCon event, JP Morgenthal, Global Director for Modern Applications Development at DXC Technology, emphasized the need to nurture and support these citizen developers to enable rapid application development in a secure and scalable manner.

Citizen developers are end users with sufficient expertise to create applications using low-code or no-code tools. As the majority of organizations lack the number of professional developers needed to address their application backlog, it is crucial to enable these citizen developers to contribute to the development process. However, DevOps teams play a critical role in providing necessary support and guardrails for these individuals to ensure the applications they create are secure and scalable.

According to Morgenthal, investing in DevOps is essential to minimize friction faced by citizen developers during application development. Without proper support, there is a risk that these developers, who have other primary tasks to focus on, may abandon their application efforts. He further stated that nurturing these developers and providing them with adequate support is key to their success.

Professional developers primarily concentrate on building systems of record applications, while there is a growing demand for applications driving systems of engagement. This scenario has led to increased reliance on citizen developers as part of a larger trend in democratizing IT, where individuals without advanced technology degrees leverage automation to create and deploy applications.

Organizations may encounter issues when not thoroughly testing the applications developed by citizen developers, overlooking manual configuration changes, or failing to address accumulated technical debt. Additionally, to prevent burnout, it is vital to implement agile development practices by initially creating a minimally viable product (MVP) and then planning development sprints for maintenance and updates.

Furthermore, having a plan in place to transfer ownership of applications when the creator leaves the organization is crucial. This ensures continuity and proper maintenance of the applications in the long term.

While the focus of this article is on citizen developers, it is important to note that low-code and no-code tools are also used by professional developers to expedite application development. In many cases, these tools, such as the AppMaster.io no-code platform, simplify the process of application building, allowing end users to easily describe their desired workflows and streamline collaboration with professional developers.

As more applications are built and pushed through DevOps pipelines, DevOps teams must reevaluate their workflows and platforms to ensure these applications can be updated and maintained at scale. Adopting low-code and no-code platforms like AppMaster tools will not only help address the growing demand for applications but also democratize the IT landscape, empowering a new generation of citizen developers.