A new Gartner forecast says that by 2023, the number of citizen developers in large companies will be at least four times that of professional developers. This prediction underscores the need for IT organizations to team up with non-IT professionals to ensure faster business automation processes and data integration.
According to Gartner, IT alone cannot guarantee hyper-automation, a business-oriented, disciplined approach that companies use to quickly identify, evaluate, and automate as many businesses and IT processes as possible.
Therefore, it is important that IT engages business unit developers to ensure that they get what is needed to get the job done. The group to get involved includes “business technologists” or trained full-time developers who are available in a department such as marketing, and “citizen developers,” those who know how to use no-code, low-code or data management tools to automate processes for themselves.
The most recent Gartner survey shows that only 42 per cent of workers in the above group reported using tools specifically designed for them, 64 per cent reported working with database, data science, analytics, and AI tools, 59 per cent said they worked with application development tools, and 45 per cent said they worked with integration tools that include data integration and API management tools.
According to Jason Wong, Gartner distinguished VP, and software design and development analyst, it’s important that IT begins to see these groups as significant and important.
For organizations seeking to maximize the benefits of enterprise-driven automation, Wong outlined steps to follow. This includes co-operating and taking the named teams seriously; co-ownership and access to a variety of tools while including business technologists and citizen developers in the process; and the joint creation and enhancement of goals by involving these developers in multidisciplinary teams planning large-scale initiatives.
The sources for this piece include an article in VentureBeat.