CITIZEN
DEVELOPMENT
What is Citizen Development?
Citizen Development is when the people within an organisation build, manage, and control the digital tools they require. These are the people who know what’s needed and are the most committed to making tools that perform, and keep them performing.
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Citizen Development is driven by the global mega-trend of technology simplification (sometimes called the ‘democratisation of digital’) that is creating more opportunities for the ‘citizens’ of organisations (who are not software developers) to create the digital tools they require.
Citizen Development creates significant and enduring benefits . . .
Enhances Productivity
Easily create and maintain digital systems that are perfectly 'fitted' to your process, people and system requirements.
Improves
Culture
Fosters a culture of autonomy and ownership, where individuals feel empowered to innovate and contribute to improve their own work.
Improves Speed & Agility
Reduces system design, deployment and update time (days or weeks instead of months).
Reduces
Risk
Reduced risk of poorly fitting software procurements or failed user uptake. Enterprise grade security on development platforms.
Drives Innovation
Enables the rapid development and deployment of new solutions, which fosters the capability and culture or innovation.
'Power up' Digital Transformation
Reduces the reliance and expectations on IT and professional developers to drive digitally-led change... Expand the talent pool (to anyone!).
Reduces
Costs
Develop and pay for the features you need, reducing unnecessary expenses. the reduced 'time to solution' drives down solution costs.
and combats issues . . .
Poorly fitting software
Organisations are full of unique, established and value creating processes. Even seemingly ‘small’ mismatches between these processes and the supporting tools can result in staff frustration, elevated risks, lost time, and increased costs.
Accelerating Change
Traditional software approaches don't give organisations the freedom to adapt as they choose, and the capability to do this efficiently, effectively and continuously.
Fragmented Systems & Data.
Data is often fragmented on different, rigid, systems that integrate / fit together poorly. Gaining real understanding and insights is often slow, manual process (usually involving spreadsheets!).
IT & Developer Availability
The required pace of digitally driven change far outpaces the availability of the traditional ‘digital resources’ required to define, procure, manage or develop the digital tools required. This makes change slow and expensive.
Digital Overload
A primary cause of digital overload in the workplace is the large number of apps, data. These are often highly fragmented and mismatched to what staff need to meet the organisations requirements. Staff now expect to have digital tools that support them to excel in their roles and will move to organisations where this exists.
Changing Is Hard
Traditional software procurement requires the people and organisational processes to change to fit ‘standard’ tools which is slow, expensive and often counterproductive.
How Does
Sand Digital Help?
Sand Digital believes that organisations deserve digital systems that are as flexible, innovative and connected as the organisation itself and we know that Citizen Development enables this.
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We support you with everything you need to establish and maintain Citizen Development capability within your organisation. This includes the following services;
01
ECOSYSTEM ESTABLISHMENT​
We help organisations build a strong Citizen Development ecosystem by identifying and training in-house Citizen Developers. We set up the necessary development tools and platforms, and ensure the right governance structures are in place to guide and support the process. This approach empowers teams to create and manage their own digital solutions efficiently.
03
SUPPORT
We offer technical support and training to in-house Citizen Developers, ensuring they have the expertise to succeed. Our services include ongoing app technical support and development, regular app health checks to ensure optimal performance, and governance support to maintain a structured and efficient Citizen Development environment.
02
APP DEVELOPMENT​
We assist with app creation, offering varying levels of support based on your needs. Once the apps are built, we provide training and handover to in-house Citizen Developers, ensuring they have the skills to manage, maintain and improve the apps going forward. This can help accelerate the ‘time to value’ for new apps.
04
TOOLS & INFRASTRUCTURE​
We support and use a variety of leading low code / no code platforms and services giving your team the resources they need to build and manage apps.
We are proud to be a registered partner of Quickbase, a platform that we have seen create client value time and again for a large number of use cases. Quickbase is specifically designed for the citizen developer. We can provide a variety of license arrangements for this platform at better-than-list prices.