Citizen development, refers to the practice of non-IT professionals creating and deploying business applications within an organization. While citizen development can bring many benefits, such as increasing efficiency and helping to alleviate the IT backlog, the proper governance and guardrails must be in place to ensure there are no undiscovered and unmonitored applications within an organization that may increase security and data risks. While it may be understandable that IT departments and leadership are hesitant to fully embrace citizen development, attempts to suppress citizen development and innovative activities using unsanctioned no code platforms often only serve to exacerbate the issue.

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One option for citizen development governance is a federated model, in which responsibility for citizen development is decentralized and shared among various IT administrators and business units. This model allows citizen development to flourish while still maintaining control and oversight. Teamapps is a platform that enables organizations to scale citizen development with a federated model. It includes features such as checklists for citizen developers to complete before seeking approval and deploying their apps, with those approval requests being shared across IT administrators. All documentation about the app project is stored in one easily accessible place, ensuring that any IT administrator can read it at any given time.

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In addition to these features, Teamapps sets out the guardrails necessary for successful citizen development outcomes. This includes templates for completing documentation about the app being built, as well as educating citizen developers on best practices such as handling Personal Identifiable Information and data sensitivity. It also includes the ability for citizen developers to reflect on and describe how they’re managing data exposed through and what user access controls they have in place.

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In summary, implementing a federated governance model for citizen development, such as with the use of Teamapps, is important for ensuring best practices are followed and risks are mitigated. It allows citizen development to flourish while still maintaining control and oversight, and can help alleviate the IT burden and backlog of work.