Citizen developers are increasingly looking outside the IT organisation for application development and in many cases are building applications themselves, according to Gartner.
Gartner defines a ‘citizen developer’ as an end user who creates new business applications for consumption by others using development and runtime environments sanctioned by corporate IT.
Citizen developers are expected to build at least 25% of new business applications by 2014.
Gartner predicts that at least a third of enterprises without formalized citizen developer governance policies will encounter substantial data, process integrity and security vulnerabilities.
Gartner Research vice president Ian Finley said in the past, end-user application development (EUAD) posed limited risks to the organization because it was typically limited to a single user or workgroup.
"However, end users can now build departmental, enterprise and even public applications. While this change enables organizations to empower end users and releases IT resources, it also heightens the risks of EUAD," Finley said.
Gartner research director Eric Knipp said EUAD is being transformed by several converging forces, including changing workforce demographics, the mass customization and maturation of service-oriented architecture, simplified tools for new development and the power of cloud computing for delivering IT capabilities to end users with no IT assistance.
"If end-user developers are ignored, and they build applications without help or knowledge from the IT organization, then there is a real risk that they will fail miserably and create an unplanned burden for IT," Knipp said.
"When an application is mission-critical the pain for the IT staff is even more acute. IT leaders must be proactive in managing citizen developer initiatives by providing tools that enable transparency in monitoring, change control and analytics. Even if IT is not at the wheel, it should keep a close eye on the dashboard."
"By engaging with end users and helping them help themselves, IT can accelerate the exploitation of new technology and help end users create competitive advantage and build closer links with their business peers, while managing the risks of EUAD," Finley added.
