Gartner research indicates that organisations are either already or planning to implement active citizen-development initiatives in the near future.
What is a citizen developer?
Citizen developers are end users external to an organisation who create applications on platforms that are sanctioned by internal IT organisations.
Planning
Intentionality about planning has immediate and long-term benefits for whatever application you want to build. As you prepare to use citizen-development practices to build an application, first consider the following questions:
- What are the objectives, goals and outputs of the application? What problems are you looking to solve?
- Who will use the application?
- Do you want users to have the ability to see and edit fields, or will users need different degrees of access?
- How will users use the application? Does it provide information, collect information, route information, look up information, request information or collaborate information?
- Will the data be entered into the applications by users? Does the data need to be imported from an external source?
- How are users going to interact with your application? Will they be using a mobile device or a computer? Will they be interacting through a conversational interface such as a chatbot?
- How will stakeholders report on the application?
Planning should begin with the end of the process in mind. Outputs tend to be the drivers for inputs, and if you are looking to speed up the process, an understanding of output metrics can help identify what to measure.
Data
This is the step where you begin to build out your data. Ensure that the proper people have the right level of access to the data. First, create or open your application record, then create your data model with relevant tables and fields, and finally secure and import your data.
Design
During the design step, your focus shifts to identifying and constructing the right end-user experience and channel. Decide what functionality is needed for each user experience, whether it’s web, mobile, chatbot etc.
Logic
Logic is what makes an application a useful tool. It comes in forms ranging from what people can and cannot see, to rules that govern what happens to the data when you enter, update and delete it, and what makes users aware of the conditions and events within the application.
- Form logic: When you control what users see when they visit a form, you can increase responsiveness and productivity. Ask yourself: is this a suggestion or enforcement? Suggestions make the form easier to complete, while enforcement forces the user to complete certain actions to complete the form.
- Business rules: Logic and validation that run when records are created or when they are changed or deleted. This is useful for building conditional logic to run when the form has been submitted.
- Flow Designer: Flow Designer is a tool that is used for building business workflows. When designing a flow, consider that each flow should have a singular goal, they should be reusable, and they should be clear as to the purpose of the action.
- IntegrationHub: A powerful tool that is available when building flows and using pre-built integration connectors and actions.
- Notifications: Most applications should have a type of multi-channel notification for things like when a task is assigned to a user or group, when a request is opened for closed, and when approval is needed.
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Citizen Developer Resources
Developer Site – Site where developers can get a developer instance and train
App Engine Studio – Low-code visual app environment
Customer Success – Best practice information
Training Courses – ServiceNow’s virtual or in-person training classes