Historically, the automation of activity was purely in the hands of the people who had the special engineering expertise to do it. In manufacturing environments this meant mechanical and electrical engineers, in white collar environments, it meant software engineers. Business functions grew around these skills and thus the IT function rose up around the software and network engineers within a business. Expertise was centralised in the IT department so that software developers could help other business functions that didn’t have that expertise.
Whilst this has led to organisations with very powerful IT functions, it has also led to massive frustrations as people within other departments are having to wait for IT teams to do things that they that they desperately need.
The rise of Shadow IT
Frustrated business users have taken matters into their own hands and built out tools to help themselves and their department. This was near universally frowned on by IT departments who dubbed it Shadow IT; basically referring to any IT tool, resource or programme used within a business that has not had the approval of the IT function.
Examples of Shadow IT include tools that can be used for productivity such as Trello or Slack, or giant spreadsheets and macros that only one person in the department understands the mechanics of. Most people within the IT function see this as frustrating, as tools are incorporated into a work stack without the proper vetting by those who know and understand the IT systems the most.
Although it can be frustrating, I’m automatically sceptical of anyone talking negatively about Shadow IT. The existence of Shadow IT is proof of the failure of the IT function, business users have had to take things into their own hands because they could no longer wait for the IT team to get their act together. Complaining about Shadow IT is to have a technology-centric lens, whereas the most effective IT organisations are collaborating with the business to drive customer success.
Moving automation into the hands of everyday business users
Arguably, what we talk about as automation now is much more about moving the control of delivering technology enabled services into the hands of the everyday business users, rather than into just the hands of the IT team.
And that’s the big shift. Automation as we now know it gets wrapped together with RPA, low-code and no-code, because it is intended to be used by and to deliver value through people who are not professional software developers. That’s the broad new meaning of automation now.
Automation is moving Shadow IT out of the shadows by recognising that business users have the skills to contribute, and IT teams don’t have capacity to deliver.
The rise of low-code and the importance of no-code
Low-code/no-code development gives employees the ability to build mobile or web apps and automations without the need to write code, using a visual ‘drag and drop’ approach. This enables the continuous improvement of customer processes without the need for IT intervention, driving a dramatic increase in the pace of change.
Today, 60% of all custom apps are being built outside of the technology and IT function. Of these, 30% are built by employees with limited or no technical development skills.
Anybody who is a professional Software Developer understands that coding isn’t difficult. It’s actually pretty simple. The hard part is figuring out what code you need to write in the first place. And that unfortunately, is not something that many low-code approaches tend to address.
They don’t tackle the hard bit of automation. They create an approach of coding with pictures, but it’s still coding – just in a different syntax. And therefore, mistakes you could make in code can still be made in low-code approaches.
The difference between no-code and low-code
So, if low-code is essentially coding in pictures, what is no-code? No-code is about creating and defining purposes within the automation technologies that are closely aligned with business need and allowing business users to them to pick and configure without the possibility of making any mistakes to those automations. Think of it like ordering automations off a menu rather than cooking them up with raw ingredients.
Moving to change who can deliver the business value means moving to world that is not low-code, but genuinely no-code. And quite often that means choosing tools that are specifically designed for the job.
The power of citizen development
Business users building in low-code or no-code technologies are often called Citizen Developers. It’s this citizen developer army that we need to enable with the right no code tooling. These tools, used properly, can deliver significant cost and customer experience benefits to organisations – which is why they must be considered if businesses wish to remain relevant.
Indeed, reducing the costs of technology development creates opportunities to make smaller changes, previously ignored because there was no obvious return on investment. There is so much potential here, and the waste caused by not resolving this untapped pool of improvements is a major contributor to employee frustration.
Additionally, employees are demanding tools that empower them to digitally transform their own work; quickly, effectively, and continuously. The ability to get involved in citizen development is a game-changer for employee engagement and attracting new talent – allowing untapped potential to be unlocked in both people and operations.
Citizen development will soon be ‘business as usual’
Low-code/no-code software solutions are not going anywhere anytime soon, and therefore citizen development will soon become ‘business as usual’ across companies of all shapes, sizes and sectors. When used in the in the right way, and with the correct support and support in place, citizen development has the power to unlock innovation, drive employee engagement and be a core part of the digital transformation agenda.
