Civilian developers ≠ poor technology! To truly leverage the creativity of civilian developers, low-code is not enough

As the concept of low-code becomes more and more popular, the "civilian developer" (Citizen Developer, also known as citizen developer) related to it has also received more attention. However, in most contexts, civilian developers will equate with the technical foundation, and even use this to deduce the development route and application prospects of low-code and no-code in the enterprise. Is this really true?

Definition of civilian developer

The concept of civilian developer was first widely accepted by the industry, and it was derived from the research report of the internationally renowned consulting company Gartner. Looking through the glossary provided by Gartner’s official website, we can find that it is defined as follows: A citizen developer is an employee who creates application capabilities for consumption by themselves or others, using tools that are not actively forbidden by IT or business units. A citizen developer is a persona, not a title or targeted role. They report to a business unit or function other than IT.

(Gartner's definition of civilian developers)

From this text, we will find that there is no description of technical capabilities in the definition of civilian developers. Whether a person is a civilian developer has nothing to do with his technical ability. The only difference between civilian developers and professional developers is that the former reports to the business line rather than the IT line. In other words, in terms of the concept of civilian developers, Gartner pays more attention to the management level rather than the technical level.

Who is the low code for?

Practitioners who pay attention to enterprise informatization are already familiar with the concept of low code. As the development direction of software development technology, low-code technology greatly reduces the technical threshold of software development through visual technical means, allowing more people to participate in software development, and quickly building personalized software applications for enterprises. However, the first problem faced by companies that really introduce low-code technologies is who should use low-code tools? Do you focus on the existing IT team, or directly "delegate" the work of software development to the business team?

The concept of civilian developers provides a framework for us to discuss this issue. Technology is people-oriented, and the core of all technology is people. Whenever we introduce a new technology, in addition to the characteristics of the technology, we also need to sort out and analyze the management and job responsibilities.

As we all know, in modern enterprise management, an employee’s job behavior and thinking logic are directly related to the employee’s job definition and reporting route, because these two determine the employee’s assessment standards and ultimately affect the employee’s salary and occupation. develop. Therefore, when we are discussing how a job or productivity tool can be implemented in an enterprise, we must clarify the position that undertakes the job in order to reduce the impact on the existing organizational structure and increase the success rate of implementation. This is also the main reason why Gartner proposed the concept of civilian developers and used it as a "user profile" for research and analysis.

Civilian developers vs. professional developers, who is the main force of low-code user groups? This question can be more intuitively transformed into another "more practical" question: Should the company let the IT team be responsible for the development of applications, or let the business team solve the needs of informatization by themselves.

IT team vs business team

Because the reporting superior is not the IT department, civilian developers have three major challenges compared with professional developers when developing software. Only when the management recognizes these three points and optimizes them at the organizational and management level, can more civilian developers from the business department participate in the software development process, and ultimately achieve the goal of "multiple corporate IT capabilities".

Software quality: "short, flat and fast" takes precedence over maintainability

Compared with IT departments that have clear development plans and special budget guarantees, the requirements of business departments for informatization are usually closely related to the current problems. When there is a problem that needs to be solved, and the IT department cannot solve it in time, the business team will make a temporary budget to develop software for itself.

The investment in software development by civilian developers who report to the business department is more fragmented. Although the peak value is high, it is not sustainable. Moreover, as software applications get on the right track, there is a high probability that the business department will hand over the follow-up maintenance work to the IT department as soon as possible, that is, handover from civilian developers to professional developers. If the civilian developers fail to complete the software development and delivery as expected in a relatively short period of time, the business department will lose the biggest reason to stay in their team. The project is likely to be stranded directly or handed over to the IT team and enter the development queue. For civilian developers, the project has failed.

(Software procurement and development investment of a business department)

Therefore, most civilian developers will pay more attention to how to complete the application development and put it into use at the fastest speed to achieve the basic goal of "useability", rather than invest energy in software quality and maintainability. "Short, flat and fast" has become a key word for civilian developers to build applications. In contrast, in IT departments that need to maintain information systems for a long time, professional developers must put quality and maintainability (including function expansion, data consistency, system integration, etc.) in an important position, otherwise they will give themselves and Other team members "dig holes" and it is difficult to sustainably develop.

Learning preferences: more sensitive to learning input

It is undeniable that civilian developers may be slightly weaker than professional developers in terms of technical capabilities, but this is more like the result of the operation mode of civilian developers, rather than the cause.

In order to further achieve the goal of "short, flat, fast" and cope with unsustainable software development, civilian developers are usually more sensitive to learning input. Unless you are proficient in certain software development skills through work outside of your current position, every minute that civilian developers invest in learning software development techniques will slow down the speed of project delivery and increase the risk of project failure. This is the last situation that many civilian developers want to see.

Aside from the project itself, compared to the professional development path and continuous practical opportunities of professional developers in the IT team, the learning of software development technology by civilian developers is even less "cost-effective". Because business capabilities are the most significant advantage of civilian developers, and also their largest capital; and development capabilities, it is not known when they will be used again. How to give civilian developers the opportunity and motivation to continuously improve their development capabilities through learning is a difficult problem facing the leaders of civilian developers.

(Promotion of professional developers)

Risk appetite: more sensitive to operation and maintenance risks

From the two characteristics of low learning input and more focus on short-term effects, it is not difficult to see that applications built by civilian developers have a higher quality risk than professional developers. However, the business team's sensitivity to system operation and maintenance risks such as data errors, low system availability, and poor data security will not show obvious differences due to different developers. What's more troublesome is that civilian developers themselves are in the business team, and once there is a problem with the application they build, all losses will be borne by the business team. In many medium and large enterprises, this risk cannot be ignored.

In fact, the primary factor in determining risk sensitivity is the application scenario of the software. In terms of the types of application scenarios, enterprises are more sensitive to the risks of core business systems such as production, sales, and investment; edge applications such as OA and personnel are less sensitive. In terms of data operation capabilities, the person in charge is more assured of data analysis applications that only read data; while writing data, especially ERP two open applications that write data to core business systems, have stricter requirements. Therefore, it is a widely accepted "best practice" for professional developers in the IT department to focus on core business scenarios and scenarios where data needs to be written, and for edge applications to invite civilian developers from relevant business teams to participate.

The breakthrough road of civilian developers: self-driven entrepreneurial team

To sum up, in the low-code user group, professional developers from the IT department have more advantages than business teams in terms of learning growth and quality assurance, and are more suitable for building high-value core business applications. Haibi Research mentioned in the "2021 China Low Code No Code Market Research Report" that among the users who use low code to develop various applications, business personnel account for only 25%, and the rest are from low code platform vendors. , Partners and R&D personnel in the corporate IT department, that is, professional developers.

(Low-code users are mainly professional developers, Haibi Research)

In the 2021 enterprise-level low-code application competition that ended this fall, a large number of enterprise core business applications built using movable-type low-code development platforms were displayed intensively. We can see that all the award-winning works come from software companies or corporate IT departments, which fully confirms the results of the research report. However, can civilian developers only make some simple applications and cannot create higher value for the enterprise?

We believe that since the fixed job definition creates the difference between civilian developers and professional developers, companies can break this barrier from the root and completely liberate the productivity of civilian developers, that is, create a self-driven entrepreneurial team.

On the one hand, the management evaluates employees from the performance of the company as a whole, rather than the performance of the specific team, to give enough motivation to civilian developers who are brave to innovate and accelerate the digital construction of the company, forming a positive cycle with employees' self-drive. On the other hand, at the company level, a mechanism for the transfer of personnel between the business team and the IT team is formed, and even the job distinction is downplayed like an entrepreneurial team, so that civilian developers can exchange identities with professional developers, ensuring that civilian developers are also engaged in professional development The opportunity to learn new technologies in the team and continue to "recharge"; professional developers can also deepen their understanding of business operations in the business work.

Successful practice from Putaocheng

As the world's leading provider of software development technology and low-code platform, Grape City has introduced civilian developers into the information construction of market operations and achieved satisfactory results. Civilian developers from the marketing team have used movable type to develop core business applications including the novice training camp operating system, and put their deep understanding of user operation processes and concepts into a software system that serves internal and external users. Movable type design concept covering the whole life cycle of software development and professional system architecture ensure the quality, performance and maintainability of these software systems. Every month, hundreds of users start their own low-code journey through the novice training camp in Grape City. However, few of them know that the online systems used when registering to join the camp, receiving reminders for class opening, submitting homework, and checking comments are all developed by civilian developers using movable type.

(Novice training camp operation system built by civilian developers)

The practice of Grape City shows that, compared with the professional developers of the company's IT department or technical support team, civilian developers can maintain a very high iterative frequency of customized software to meet their own operational needs to the greatest extent. It is worth mentioning that, in order to allow the "civilian developers to build core business applications" mode to continue to operate healthily, the grape city marketing department has assigned a dedicated person to study the development skills of movable type, and invest a certain percentage of man-hours, dedicated to development and Optimize the software system used by the team and maintain close communication with the R&D department to keep the development capabilities frequently and new.

Finally, I wish all companies that have introduced low-code technologies to find their own landing plans, fully enjoy the dividends brought by the advancement of software development technology, and make the company's digitalization process reach new heights.