Citizen Development-Train the Citizen Developers

[Paige Duffey]

Training the Citizen Developers​

Creating training and learning pathways for the citizen developers is crucial for the success of the Citizen Developer CoE program. Here are some best practices to take into consideration when developing a training program for your citizen developers. ​

The training needs to be easily consumable, and it should be offered in manageable chunks so the citizen developers can do the training part-time. This is a “second” job function for the citizen developer, so training needs to reflect that.​

Citizen developer personas​

When creating the training program, you should consider the different personas these citizen developers may represent. Each persona will have a different skill set and different responsibilities within the organization. As a result, the training they receive is most effective when tailored to these aspects of the persona.​

Best practice is to identify the training path for each development persona along with the access the citizen developer will be granted as they successfully complete training. Citizen developer training may need to include fundamentals training for specific ServiceNow products as citizen developers may work in a specific area of the platform. For example, a citizen developer for the HR department of your company should take HR service delivery fundamentals class in addition to the application development classes.​

Curriculum and content​

The ServiceNow Citizen Developer Certification Program helps citizen developers quickly learn how to use ServiceNow's no-code, low-code solutions to build custom applications. ​

However, the training should not only incorporate ServiceNow content but also company-specific content including your company’s policies, standards, processes, etc. It’s important that the company-specific training be appropriate to a citizen developer, meaning you don’t want to train them on every IT policy, just the relevant ones in a manner and language that would make sense to a non-IT person.​

Once the curriculum is in place, implement a mechanism to assess the citizen developer on the development best practices covered in the training. While course certifications would be proof of ServiceNow training (micro-certs), it might look different for company-specific training (short quiz or questionnaire about policies, etc.)​

The training curriculum should incorporate ongoing courses as new ServiceNow features are released. ​

Granting access​

As citizen developers complete additional training and demonstrate competencies in new areas of the Now Platform, you can start granting them access to additional development tools accordingly. ​

For example, after the citizen developer has passed the ServiceNow scripting class, they could be allowed to create scripts for their application.

Center of Excellence Navigation

Citizen Development - Center of Excellence

1. Vision and Plan
   1. Themes of a Successful Citizen Development Program
   2. Define a Clear Value Proposition
   3. Understand the Foundational Elements
2. Focus the Program
   1. Identify the Right Use Cases
   2. Recruit the Citizen Developers
3. Enable and Empower
   1. Train the Citizen Developers
   2. Establish a Support Model
4. Establish Guardrails
   1. Define the Application Lifecycle
   2. Automate the Development Process