Citizen Developers: Tomorrow's App Builders

Growing Mobile App Development By Engaging Business Users

 

Speed Digital Transformation: Enable Business Users to Create Applications

Employees, partners, suppliers, and customers all want to do more business using mobile devices. As a result, organizations need new business apps and more application development to update existing mobile apps. Unfortunately, IT is strapped to meet this exploding demand.

Professional developers with mobile experience are hard to find and hire. In addition, the mobile app development talent you need to get hundreds of apps built does not exist in your organization. Or do they?

There's a solution to the app development bottleneck: training business users or citizen developers to create apps. This growing technology strategy is also called citizen development. Gartner predicts that citizen developers will soon outnumber professional developers in organizations by 4-to-1.

How to Increase App Development

Companies are building more apps with the teams they already have within their organizations. They're using low-code platforms and no-code tools to empower citizen developers to build web and mobile apps. With these solutions, software developers can also build business applications faster.

What are Citizen Developers?

Citizen developers are non-IT workers who build task-oriented business applications to solve business problems. They create new business applications for consumption by other users. Often, they employ intuitive, no-code software or low-code app development tools to build apps.

Preparing Organizations for Citizen Development

This software democratization trend is growing. Organizations are enabling more workers -- often in surprising areas of the business -- to learn application development. Companies are adopting innovative software to serve new types of app builders. More users in organizations are becoming tech-savvy and adopting new software and technologies to complete tasks efficiently.

As a result, IT staff that support these users will become more strategic to their enterprise. 

IT Departments and Citizen Development

Savvy IT Departments are helping business users identify enterprise app development solutions, including the training they need to get started. They're sharing best practices for mobile app design and user experience.

During the process, data governance and citizen developer governance will be imperative. Without proper oversight, enterprise standards for app development and security might be at risk. IT Departments will need to create policies, sanction software, and convey best practices for app design and development. If they fail to direct organizations in proper citizen development practices, they risk poor app experiences and security risks.

Enabling Citizen Developers

Read how successful organizations are decreasing the app backlog and digitizing business processes with citizen developers. They're enabling more workers -- often in surprising areas of the business -- to learn application development. You'll learn:

  • Predictions for how many business apps enterprises will need to build in the coming years
  • Practical examples of business analysts and business domain experts building enterprise apps
  • What your organization must do to empower line of business employees to build apps
  • Important requirements that must be met for the line of business workers to successfully build applications
  • Low-code app development platforms, no-code softwareand drag and drop development tools for citizen development.
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Citizen Developers and Low-Code / No-Code App Development

Alpha Software Corporation accelerates digital transformation and eliminates the bottleneck traditionally associated with developing business apps. The Company offers the only business solution with both “no-code” and “low-code” environments to serve business users and IT developers. Both groups can use their unique talents to create apps that solve business problems, increase productivity and deliver business value.

  • The Alpha Transform no-code app builder enables people who cannot code to build mobile apps that solve business problems. Using this no-code software, front-line workers can turn any paper form into a mobile app with a great customer experience. The cross-platform app works on iOS or Android smartphones and can leverage cameras, scanning, audio recording, GPS, and more.

    Citizen developers can use the software to build apps in minutes. Power users & developers can add advanced app functionality with Alpha TransForm's built-in programming language. The software:
    • designs the app for the user, including offline and security functionality
    • allows the user to easily adjust the layout to fit any business process or priorities
    • gives the user a real-time preview of what the data collection app will look like
    • deploys the app for the user
    • collects the data and analyzes it for the user on interactive dashboards.
  • The Alpha Anywhere low-code application development platform enables developers to create secure business applications with rich user experiences. Developers can use this low-code software to develop web or mobile apps from scratch. They can integrate the apps with popular software, corporate databases, or workflows. In addition, developers can add code to incorporate machine learning or add advanced security requirements to protect corporate data.

  • The Alpha Cloud hosting service uses cloud computing to deploy apps directly from Alpha Anywhere quickly and affordably. Deployment is easy with reasonable defaults; however, developers are in full control of a rich set of options.

    Developers can manage how their applications are deployed, allowing them to meet any enterprise requirements and scale as needed.
    Alpha Cloud currently runs on Amazon AWS. 
Have questions?  Contact Alpha Software at 781-850-4600