by With the right tools, and guidance, businesses of all shapes and sizes can engineer their own custom software to meet their needs, writes David Small, CTO of Business Applications at Telefónica Tech
IT has said that every company is now a technology business, no matter what product or service it provides, and those who accept this fact are the ones who succeed and shape our lives.
This may be a bit of an exaggeration, but the undeniable fact is that no company can make, deliver or market its product effectively and efficiently without technology.
And more and more, those companies that take advantage of the technical know-how of their people are the ones that are most successful.
This is what has fueled the recent citizen developer phenomenon. For those who don’t know, citizen development is a business process that encourages non-IT-skilled employees to become software developers, using low-code/no-code IT (LCNC) platforms to create and improve business applications.
This approach to software development enables employees – despite their lack of formal education in coding – to create and customize existing software programs to meet specific user needs and improve operational efficiency within a company.
Low-code platforms typically enable business users with no knowledge of how coding works to address their own development needs.
This can be challenging for organizations new to the phenomenon, but with the right tools, processes and governance in place, it can be very effective. In today’s rapidly evolving technology landscape, we believe the concept of citizen developers is revolutionizing how organizations approach software development.
Telefónica Tech UK&I is actively supporting organizations to implement this approach, particularly through what we call Fusion Teams. These teams are a combination of citizen developers and IT professionals who collaborate to accelerate digital transformation.
By leveraging the diverse skill sets of technical and non-technical members, Fusion Teams drive innovation and efficiency.
Recent studies indicate that 89% of CIOs and IT professionals are overwhelmed by the effectiveness of a low-code approach to improving efficiency.
David Small, CTO of Business Applications at Telefónica Tech
Looking ahead, Gartner predicts that the landscape will change significantly, expecting at least 80% of the user base for low-code development tools to be developers outside of formal IT departments by 2026.
In our experience, the benefits of having citizen developers in your organization include:
■ Accelerated Innovation: Citizen developers can quickly prototype and deploy solutions, leading to faster innovation cycles.
■ Reduced IT Burden: With citizen developers taking on more development tasks, IT teams can focus on more complex strategic initiatives.
■ Democratized Technology: Microsoft’s Low-Code Power Platform democratizes technology, making it accessible to a wider range of employees, fostering a more inclusive digital workplace.
■ Improved Collaboration: Fusion Teams facilitate better communication and collaboration between IT and other business units.
Telefónica Tech’s application experts are helping organizations implement and customize technologies such as Microsoft’s Power Platform to make this happen. Power Platform stands as a beacon in this transformative era.
It includes a set of tools – Power BI, Power Apps, Power Automate, Power Pages and Microsoft Copilot Studio (formerly Power Virtual Agents). These tools enable users to analyze data, build solutions, automate processes, and create virtual agents with minimal coding experience.
So what are the best practices for implementing Fusion Teams with Power Platform? They include:
■ Clear Governance: Establish clear guidelines and governance models to manage the balance between innovation and control. A Power Platform Center of Excellence can help set the standards across different departments of a company with separate Fusion Teams.
■ Training and Support: Invest in training resources to empower citizen developers and ensure they have the necessary support. Microsoft Learn’s free learning paths are generally the best asset for this with progress tracking and knowledge checks throughout.
■ Foster a Collaborative Culture: Encourage a culture of collaboration and continuous learning between IT professionals and citizen developers such as pair programming or peer review.
■ Monitor and Measure Success: Regularly monitor the performance and impact of solutions developed by Fusion Teams. The Power Platform Center of Excellence starter kit can be installed to provide a single view of all business functions across Power Platform and Dynamics 365 environments.
Telefónica Tech UK&I is helping a number of organizations successfully implement Fusion
Teams using Microsoft Power Platform. For example, a Financial Services company we work with used Power Platform to streamline onboarding and broker management, significantly reducing manual errors and improving efficiency.
With the business knowledge of citizen developers, the low-code platform accelerated the solution to meet the highest priority business problems and increased user adoption.
In our opinion, the collaboration and combination of IT professionals and citizen developers through platforms like Microsoft Power Platform is essential in a rapidly changing digital world.
Careful planning, management and governance are essential to its success. With the help of application experts such as Telefónica Tech, it is essential to adopt a best practice blueprint. This should be managed through a Center of Excellence, ensuring the right balance between innovation and control, supported by appropriate training.
With a collaborative approach, organizations can look forward to a more democratized, efficient and innovative future in software development, leveraging the combined strengths of different teams. As organizations continue to adopt this model, the potential for transformational change is limitless.
Telefónica Tech is the leading company in digital transformation. We have a wide range of services and integrated technology solutions for Cyber Security, Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Business Applications and Blockchain.
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