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Institutionalize standards
Institutionalize standards to ensure quality, security and control
As with any new tech roll-out, you need to put processes, controls, practices in place right from the outset. You cannot expect employees on the frontline to be familiar with relevant regulatory and compliance controls when they’re developing a solution to a productivity problem.
Implementing a federated, citizen-led operating model facilitates citizen development by:
- Deploying global central governance with mini COEs to strategically guide the program and allay any fears that automation might bring - enable change in people's behavior and mindset.
- Institutionalizing standards and maintaining global governance and reporting.
- Partnering with Compliance and InfoSec teams to ensure security and control - avoid the risk of shadow IT.
Identify processes
Identify the right processes to automate in a governed model
To set the citizen developer program up for success, strategic intent must be established
top-down by:
- Identifying the right business use cases with potential return on investment to make the engagement meaningful and measure impact.
- Looking for line of businesses having manual repetitive tasks to automate - HR, Training, QA and Finance could be a good fit for starters.
- Identify bottlenecks – provide a filter to vet – and possibly score processes to determine sustainability of the program.
Onboard Citizen Developers
Onboard citizen developers and provide training to create an automation mindset
Everyone can have access to automation, but not everyone can be a citizen developer. Just as important as selecting the right use cases is finding the right citizen developers by:
- Categorizing based on skill-level, aptitude and attitude.
- Getting your IT department to do some in-depth skill sharing and setting up collaborative meetings.
- Creating a training methodology for skill enhancement in collaboration with transformation partners.
- Developing curriculum to change people’s behavior and mindset.
Decide on platform
Decide which no-code/low-code platform to go with
There are a wide range of platforms on the market — so before going platform hunting:
- Consider the role of no-code/low-code platforms in your architecture and the larger infrastructures they must function in.
- Create a checklist of the features and integrations that you need by analyzing your current workflows.
- Look at no-code tools that can be customized to fit your workflows and meet the needs of both your end-users and your business.
Enable teams
Enable agile cross-functional teams to go into action
You need to put the right guidance, guardrails, toolsets, and training to maximize the chance of success for citizen development by:
- Creating small teams for rapid prototyping and incremental delivery.
- Assigning mentors - Champions (to advise on the technical side of things) and Process Owners (to advise on the business application of bots).
- Collaborating with Automation Implementation partners to help participants get their bearings in place from a basic coding perspective.
Evaluate automations
Evaluate your citizen-led automations
Once citizen developers start creating bots, ongoing assessments need to be carried out for:
- Steering progress and ensuring quality and coverage.
- Updating corresponding bots on any program changes.
- Maintaining the reliability and efficiency of the developed bots.
Reward power-users
Reward “power users” and watch them turn into program evangelists
Use experience mirroring – a common human behavior – to advance your citizen development agenda. Find your “power users” – celebrate great bots and reward the people who create them. Recognition helps in:
- Creating positive internal PR with successes stories echoed across the organization.
- Building momentum to identify automation opportunities for use in the wider organization.
- Driving a culture of innovation.
