They say many hands make light work, so imagine what you could achieve by supporting new types of developers within your organization. In a recent webinar, Betty Blocks CEO, Chris Obdam, explains why this is precisely what enterprises need to do to drive growth. Chris dives into how Betty Blocks' citizen development platform combines no-code and low-code technology, enabling organizations to unlock previously untapped resources from within the business.
Without sacrificing control, organizations empower new types of developers and enable them to build their own solutions to the challenges they face on a daily basis.
Check out the video below to hear Chris discuss the options of adding new types of developers to both the business side and IT.
Get access to the full webinar here.
The growing need for new digital solutions and collaboration across the board
Creating and capturing digital value is now at the heart of every organization's strategy – it's the basis for growth and excellence. In order to continuously meet the needs of consumers, it’s essential to keep challenging the way your business transforms digitally.
Yet, according to PMI (Project Management Institute), a whopping 86% of decision-makers say they don’t have enough developers on board to transform their business digitally. On top of that, 75% of IT projects fail because of misalignment with the business. It's the famous gap between the business side and IT – though no one side is to blame for this.
These kinds of statistics are the reason organizations are increasingly seeking ways for the business side to be self-reliant – for business-side employees to have the ability to build their own digital solutions.
Involving the wider organization in app development
So, how do you overcome IT-related hurdles and empower the business side to be self-reliant? By decentralizing the effort and enabling employees with the skills to lead change to be part of software development. This way, you expand your developer pool and broaden the range of expertise involved in the development process. And how do you make that happen? By introducing new types of developers.
Organizations that successfully implement citizen development in their organization, experience the following benefits:
- Shorter time-to-market
By building apps with predefined building blocks and only using code to extend the platform when needed, development time decreases significantly – implementing changes four to eight times faster than usual is not uncommon. The tasks that once spent weeks on the IT backlog can now be executed by citizen developers (under the governance of IT) in just a few clicks.
- Greater agility
The ability to be fast and flexible is what gives organizations their competitive edge, and the pandemic has made that very clear. Using no-code/low-code for citizen development ensures you involve the people who are closest to the problem in the development process – the people who are able to spot subtle changes in the market and understand how this impacts the project.
- Cutting costs
Because citizen development promotes an agile way of working, organizations are able to continuously test and launch new features of their applications. This way, requirements are consistently met and costs become transparent and efficient. Additionally, Betty Blocks' citizen development platform is cloud-based, meaning platform updates and maintenance happen automatically, decreasing costs considerably.
Different types of developers
From time to time we get the question: Will citizen developers replace my IT department? And our answer is always: No. Different types of developers – including experienced developers – must work together and combine their expertise.
At Betty Blocks, we distinguish between three types of developers who must work together with a citizen development platform:
- Experienced developer
- Citizen developer business-user
- Citizen developer power-user
Experienced developers support citizen developers and extend the platform. They build custom components when citizen developers need them. This way, you never become stuck in the development process.
Citizen developer power-users do the heavy lifting. They are tech-savvy and business-minded developers who will utilize most of the no-code functionalities and some of the low-code functionalities as well, depending on their skills. In general, the power user is someone who develops apps on a day-to-day basis.
Though citizen developer business users don’t spend a lot of time on the platform, they are capable of making small adjustments, such as duplicating a page and changing the content. Citizen developer business users are part of the development process – they are involved in thinking about digital solutions and can deliver concrete requirements.
Get access to the full webinar here and discover more valuable insights into empowering new types of developers.
