[#4] WTH is Citizen Development? 🥸

In the last couple of years, the tech industry has especially been very keen on letting end users provide feedback not just via emails, but by giving them access to modify the system itself.

And it makes sense! There is a reason why end-user feedback is so important. If taken seriously it nurtures the growth of your product exponentially. Letting your end-users implement their thought process directly on the product helps gather value and at the same time provides IT teams with the best direction to move forward.

End-users who actively participate in this approach are termed as 'Citizen Developers' and the process - 'Citizen Development'. Does this mean developers won't be needed in the future? Of course not. Providing this ability itself is a core development task.

Even if citizen developers end up modifying the product, they often still lack the technical ability required to perform platform modifications. They simply do not have the tools to perform their actions. Opening up the access to the code repository for them is of no use, rather, it increases risk.

Developers develop the product in a way that enables 'low-code' development on the platform. YAMLs, drag-and-drop features, basic configurations - in general, anything that doesn't involve scripting MAY qualify as low-code. May, because not all configurations, settings, and checkboxes have easy-to-understand explanation of their impact.

-- Sumeet

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