It is crucial for IT administrators to have a solid change management plan in place when considering or implementing citizen development within their organization to ensure success.

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Citizen development involves the introduction of new technology or the leveraging of existing tools in a different manner. It also represents fundamental changes to the way of working, culture, governance, business processes, and even wider community engagement. These changes can be met with resistance, as employees may be hesitant to adopt new ways of working or may have concerns about their roles within the organization. On the other hand, some employees may embrace the change so much that attempts to suppress organic or bottom-up citizen development may only serve to increase change management challenges.

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To manage this resistance and ensure a successful citizen development outcome, it is important to have a top-down and bottom-up approach to change management. This means having support from both the leadership team and individual employees. Communication is key in managing change, as it helps employees understand the reasons behind the changes and how it will benefit them and the organization as a whole. Recognition and resources also play a role in successful change management, as employees need to feel valued and supported in the transition process.

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In addition to these strategies and tools, it is important to have the right governance in place for citizen development. Federated governance, in particular, can be effective in balancing the needs of the organization with the autonomy and innovation of citizen developers.

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The Teamapps platform assists in managing change and scaling citizen development. It serves as the citizen development HQ and includes features such as guidelines for creators to follow to have their apps approved, rules-based adaptive governance for IT administrators to focus on higher risk projects, and resources for citizen developers to understand security measures and app build standards such as appropriate documentation on their no code or low code app projects. These features help IT admins properly rollout citizen development and reduce resistance to change, as well as lowering the risk for the organization.