Who Is This Book For?

At its core, this book is for anyone looking to convert ideas into reality, with larger organizations more likely to benefit most from the transformative potential of citizen development. Specifically, this book is for individuals and managers who see opportunities to change and improve their own work, how teams and departments around them work, and how the organization operates and serves its customers, where speed and time to market are the driving forces.

This book is relevant to all employees within an organization, whether they are process experts, business analysts, operational subject matter experts (SMEs), hired consultants, project and program managers, IT specialists, architects, C-suite executives, or students leaving the world of education for the job market. It is ultimately a book for anyone who is involved in citizen development in a large organizational setting, regardless of whether they are developing the applications themselves or facilitating the development.

There are three main groups that make citizen development possible: practitioners, architects, and strategists. While the content of this book is predominantly aimed toward citizen developer practitioners and architects, it will also prove to be a useful reference guide for strategists. In Table 1, we define these three groups and the typical roles they may fill in an organization.

We introduce key concepts and provide a framework and methodology that will guide individuals and managers through a set of steps to successfully introduce citizen development into an organization, build capability to scale, and create a culture of citizen development innovation.

Not only will this book help citizen development projects deliver tangible outcomes, it will also support the business community in safely developing business applications, giving rise to a significant increase in an organization's capacity to transform digitally.