It’s a Citizens Revolution
It’s a Citizens Revolution
Citizen Developers are leading and winning the business innovation fight back - Digital KAIZEN reinventing continuous improvement
Two years ago I would have asked is the citizen developer revolution worth the risk ?
Covid, a dysfunctional Russia, the shift to Net Zero and fragmentation of the global economy has led to the rise of the citizen developer;
Manning the barricades and sitting in the operational trenches business subject matter experts from every part of the enterprise are embracing low code / no code solutions to mitigate disruption and drive digital Kaizen (micro services)
So the answer is YES, it’s worth the risk
And Ill explain why
Context:
Enterprise tech has been with us now for over 3 decades, but the IT consulting industry still struggle’s to clearly explain to organisations how the business can extract the real value from tech.
70 % +/- of all digital programmes fail to achieve their required business outcomes that's just fact, $2 out of $3 invested in Digital is wasted, that fact came from WEF Davos 2018, and those boys and girls know how to count money.
And time and time again the business leave and trust their IT cadre to deliver heavy duty business transformation, only to find a constant trail of failure, wasted investment and reputational damage !!
One would say there is no Tech debt in ERP, the debt arises from poor IT maintenance and support,
So why would you allow this cycle of failure to continue ??
So in despair organisations embraced agile, a different more funky method to deliver failure, led by the same cadre of IT failure experts
With roughly the same rates of failure !
Every now and again the tech industry will give the business hope, that they can cut out the middleman and deliver the tech they need to run the business.
I first saw this back in the noughties, with SAP BW offering finance communities levels of self-sufficiency, once the data model was locked FP&A teams could then exploit data as necessary working within a highly controlled SOX environment.
This became a springboard for data self-service,
The data analytics self-sufficiently model became embedded within COEs, PowerBI then entered the fray and we started to see ERP Data become wildly available within the operational space, with manufacturing and logistical teams embracing analytical self sufficiency
There is a but, whilst some organisations have made data as a service and self -service work, far too many CIOs have seen the rise of self-service as a threat to their domain, a first step to the business owning digital as is their right.
So the cycle continues with the evolution of ERP and platform micro service tooling.
Then came “Global Disruption”,
Cometh the hour, cometh the Citizen Developer,
The advent of micro services, being bolt on process specific enablers using low code or no code solutions with intelligence built in, delivered by a tech centric organisations, essentially anyone in the organisation can become a citizen developer.
But the real value is the speed at which business value can be delivered, hours & days, not months, we call this on demand digital Kaizen.
So what is No Code and Low Code ?
No Code, no coding required, using standard configurable templates, often with AI built in. (Localisation is very limited)
Low Code, similar to no code with AI, but with some degree of coding required. Provides a greater degree of localisation.
How easy is it to establish the service ?
It’s really easy……
The first barrier to success is who owns the no code / citizen developer space, well in my mind it shouldn't be the CIO / IT. It must be the CFO or COO as this is business led innovation, IT have had 30 plus years to demonstrate they can’t be trusted and they can’t.
Then on to the Enterprise Architects to agree the need and outcomes with the business. It’s a very quick process to identify the low code / No code tooling aligned to the organisations platform strategy. Can be up and running in hours .........
Then comes establishing the rules of the game, governance and control's, controls are important both in terms of how we deliver change but also the process controls which must be adhered to, if we are enhancing or changing business processes.
We still need to have design artefacts, we still need to test and support, we don't want to accrue tech debt and have IT make a power play to take Low code into their domain of failure !!!
And finally and most importantly, training the citizen developers; how to use the tooling and how the governance model works.
For me the advent of the Citizen developer is a cultural tipping point within an organisation.
It eludes to the organisations digital maturity and ability to evolve and tackle the challenges of global disruption.
It means that an organisation can harness Kaizen continuous improvement to its full potential
Any CIO that says no to Citizen developers is writing their own obituary.
If you want to learn more about Dragon ERP’s “Digital Kaizen” service and how we are helping establish the citizen developer then contact a Dragon.
Dragon ERP, A SAP Target Operating model Innovation Integrator “TOMII”, changing the way organisations unlock the value of their SAP investment.
If you want to know more about how SAP is changing and how Dragon ERPs Plug and Play transformation methodology unlocks accelerated benefit realisation then contact a Dragon today.
https://dragonerp.co.uk/contact-us
About the Author:
Alisdair Bach is a SAP mentor and influencer with over
30 years’ experience in shaping the SAP journey for the
global 2,000.
