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In February, low- and no-code SaaS provider Kissflow reported that 60% of custom applications are being developed outside of IT, and that the global low-code market will reach $186 billion by 2030. A 2025 report from Index, a provider of remote software engineering services, confirms the projection, forecasting a $187 billion low-code market by 2030, and predicting that 80% of low-code users will come from user departments outside IT.
"Citizen development is no longer a concept for the future," said Kissflow CEO Suresh Sambandam. "It is already driving digital transformation in organizations around the world."
The value that users gain from developing their own applications has always been clear. Users grow tired of waiting out huge IT backlogs and, in some cases, having IT tell them what to do. Now, users also have access to AI-enhanced code generation and generative AI tool sets that can automate parts of the development process that IT once handled. AI is also beginning to make inroads into infrastructure definition and generation (historically IT functions), though these capabilities remain far from perfect. There are CIOs who look at these work backlogs and welcome the idea of citizen IT. Many CIOs even consider being entirely hands-off when it comes to citizen IT. But can IT afford to take an entirely hands-off position -- or is there a vital role that IT should play?
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Most CIOs already see what's happening here.
First, low-code and no-code applications are here to stay, and end users will continue to be their primary developers and users. User departments will have their own IT mini-budgets to fund these new tools, and because they do not have to knock on IT's door for funding, IT may not even know about the decisions.
Second, somehow in the face of this, IT must insert itself into the low- and no-code acquisition and development processes, establishing guardrails and integration oversight. If IT fails to do this, enterprises risk losing the value of their investments in low- and no-code tools, as well as the user time spent on applications that can't scale because issues like integration with the overall IT infrastructure and systems weren't considered in the first place.
CIOs sit at their desks and ponder the best approaches to user computing. There are some who have told me, "So what?" when I ask them what happens if a user department wants to scale its application and the app can't scale because the users never consulted with IT.
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I would argue the "hands off, it's your problem," approach is unsustainable for CIOs. It is unsustainable because enterprises ultimately hold IT accountable for managing all IT everywhere -- and for ensuring that the company's IT is working to the best business advantage.
These goals are not front and center for user departments, where 58% of applications, as the Index report cited above notes, are relatively myopic in scope. Such applications are focused on creating forms and collecting data that assist departmental operations but offer little leverage or scalability for anyone else.
The AI systems users are bringing online pose similar obstacles to enterprise-wide scalability: They are purposely focused on specific business use cases, which keeps them from becoming overly broad in scope. This business use case discipline is prudent until businesses mature their AI skills. However, the tradeoff is that these early, highly tailored AI systems (e.g., an AI diagnostic system for factory equipment testing) aren't very useful or scalable to other business functions.
The bottom line for CIOs: they must insert IT into citizen development.
The quandaries that citizen developers and user departments face include the following:
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Choosing the right tools for low- and no-code application development.
Negotiating poorly with IT vendors.
Failing to consider the broader integration with other enterprise systems when they outgrow their applications and want these apps to do more.
All are areas where IT can help. Here are three recommendations:
Since its enterprise beginnings in the 1950s, IT has had the image of an impenetrable fortress for users -- a fortress that dictates where and when application development will occur and expects users to wait their turn. And, almost as early, users found workarounds.
In the early days of IT, vendors offered 3GL (third-generation languages) and 4GL code generators that were intended to help users develop their own apps so they could circumvent IT. Today, these early code generators have been replaced by low-code and no-code tools that are more user-friendly to operate. However, even with more user-friendly low-code and no-code tools, users still find themselves having to go to IT with its perceived "control" culture when they want to scale their apps further. Generative AI tools will help to diminish these "go-tos," but they will not eliminate them altogether.
On the IT side, there are many CIOs who realize that IT has this controlling image with users that, in fact, has sparked the citizen IT revolution. This is why forward-thinking CIOs have worked in recent years to develop a service culture in IT. This service culture development must continue so IT can foster productive and cooperative relationships with user departments and citizen developers.
Too often, IT doesn't come in contact with users until they want a new application developed or a software bug fixed. It's times like these that IT first learns that a user department purchased a low-code package 18 months earlier and already has 20 new applications running but now is having difficulty with an app because the app can't pull data from another enterprise system with which it was never integrated.
IT shouldn't be in this position. Instead, business analysts should regularly touch base with the user departments they are assigned to and sit down with users to see what they want to develop over the next 12 to 18 months. These are the times when IT can ask users whether they foresee a need to later scale out a new application so it can work with other enterprise systems -- and it is a time for IT to determine what types of integration with other IT infrastructure should be considered, or to help a user department make a well-considered decision on the best product or vendor to use for low- and no-code development. User departments also want to incorporate AI into their business processes. This will require data preparation for AI, which IT must do, and also technical work to do with a vendor. IT should be there to assist in the process.
In these scenarios, IT is providing useful assistance to citizen developers -- not telling them what to do. This cooperative, service-oriented approach can go a long way toward dispelling the old control dynamic that users perceive in IT. It can foster excellent user-IT cooperation -- and it has the potential to better leverage citizen-built IT applications so they can be easily expanded and used by others throughout the enterprise who can benefit from the information they provide.
Proactively, IT and citizen developers can work together to formalize a process in which citizen development obtains upfront IT guidance to ensure that the necessary hooks are built into a user application if it is intended to interact later with other systems. To make a formal process like this work, IT must commit to providing service and input when it is needed. Never let users wait.
President of Transworld Data
Mary E. Shacklett is an internationally recognized technology commentator and President of Transworld Data, a marketing and technology services firm. Prior to founding her own company, she was Vice President of Product Research and Software Development for Summit Information Systems, a computer software company; and Vice President of Strategic Planning and Technology at FSI International, a multinational manufacturer in the semiconductor industry.
Mary has business experience in Europe, Japan, and the Pacific Rim. She has a BS degree from the University of Wisconsin and an MA from the University of Southern California, where she taught for several years. She is listed in Who's Who Worldwide and in Who's Who in the Computer Industry.
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