Many Citizen Developers Are Producing Custom Apps- Valutrics

With demand for custom apps soaring, the presence of citizen developers is expected to grow over the next two years, according to a recent survey from FileMaker. The accompanying report, “Custom Apps: The Engine for Digital Transformation,” defines custom apps as ones that a business designs and builds to satisfy its own requirements. It describes citizen developers as “employees without formal programming training or experience” who typically create these apps outside of IT. With this, companies expect to deploy apps that enable them to be more productive and collaborative, while more effectively managing customer relationships. “Some see citizen development as the barbarian at the gate—it’s a threat to business as usual,” according to the report. “While the model of decentralized application creation is gaining ground, it is not yet the norm. But companies need to ensure they are not conflating one perceived problem with one that’s actually worse. … A disengaged, demotivated workforce participating in rigid processes that can’t adjust quickly to the changing requirements imposed by digitization directly impacts corporate culture, talent management, innovation, quality of work throughput and competitive differentiation.” IT decision-makers from more than 500 companies in North America took part in the research, which was conducted by 451 Research.