The Citizen Developer

Which Low-Code/No-Code (LCNC) Platform?

• By Howard M. Cohen
• October 31, 2024

The first "low-code/no-code" (LCNC) platform was probably Apple HyperCard, introduced in 1987. Although it never enjoyed widespread adoption, it did enable users to create some fundamental applications using a graphical interface.

By the time the term "citizen developer" was used at a Gartner event in 2009, many LCNC platforms were already emerging. Before long, there were literally dozens with all manner of odd and sometimes amusing names.
What was never amusing was the challenge of deciding which one was the right tool for the job at hand.

Today, it may be odd to think of citizen development as a maturing market, but it has been developing for a quarter century and one of the benefits of that maturity is that there is more guidance to help us make better choices.
One excellent source of such guidance is, of course, the Gartner Magic Quadrant, which lists only a half dozen tech sector leaders whose completeness of vision and ability to execute are both very high. Interestingly, most of them are fairly well-known brands:

• Mendix (a subsidiary of Siemens)
• OutSystems
• Microsoft
• ServiceNow
• Salesforce
• Appian

Assessment and selection of which platform is best for your environment is a very personal process. As with most things, different people and organizations have different preferences.

The good news is that reviews of each of these platforms are available in abundance. That could potentially also be the bad news.
When seeking the right LCNC platform for your particular needs, consider the following criteria:

Your Use Cases

Are you seeking to automate simple procedures, or to tackle much broader requirements? Are they for your manufacturing operations? Financial? Sales? Others? How complex an operation can your candidate LCNC support?

Your Data

What data entities will you need to work with? Where will it reside? Will you need to access external data sources? Is the data structured?

Manual Processes to Automate

The first question to answer about existing manual processes is whether or not they work well. Automating a bad manual process only yields a bad automated process. Catalog all the processes involved in any of your use cases.

Collaboration

Who will be performing the actual citizen development? One citizen, or more? Will they also be partnering with professional developers to complete their applications? Will the platform you’re selecting efficiently accommodate such group work?

Deployment Time

It is very likely you’ll be using citizen development to solve problems your development team doesn’t have time or bandwidth to address. The need for speed will be felt both at the beginning when you first roll out your LCNC platform, and then again when you start attempting to generate useful applications with it.

Scalability

Will the chosen platform allow you to grow your applications in alignment with the growth of your company?

Integrations

As with all of today’s software, it’s important to come to know what other platforms and applications your LCNC can integrate with natively, without middleware. Integrations dramatically expand the possibilities of what you can accomplish with your citizen-developed applications.

Interface

This is where the tool meets the user. Do your people find the interface to be intuitive enough? Easy-to-use is easy-to-say, so you really need to focus on this. If your people can’t use it, it is useless. If they can use it, then the next question becomes how quickly they can achieve mastery.

Beyond all the criteria listed above there is the relationship available to you with the platform provider. Do they provide the resources you’ll need now and, in the future, to support your growing use of your platform? Do they have people available to guide you and assist you in learning to adopt their product?
One of the six leaders listed happens to be the largest software company in the world. Others have become behemoths in their own right. You may have to dig deeper to find the people and resources you need. Or you may find a capable partner in their partner network.
It is very likely that the first person you will speak with at each company is a salesperson, especially since that’s where most of their websites guide you to. Many of these salespeople are well-versed in the advantages of their product, but you’ll want to ask them to introduce you to other resources you can work with at a much more granular level once you’ve adopted their platform.

In many ways, you’re betting your business on this choice. Be demanding when asking about training, support, functionality, capabilities, capacities, sample use cases, user reviews, and all the other criteria you will depend upon to make your best decision.