Dear Analyst #128: What is citizen development and how to build solutions with spreadsheets?
Description
This is a replay of an episode from the Citizen Development Live podcast with Neil Miller.
Citizen development is a relatively new term I learned about a year ago or so. To me, it's using no-code tools at scale within a large enterprise. It's a term that covers the population of people who are not developers, programmers, and software engineers by trade but know how to build apps and workflows to accomplish business-critical tasks. This is the definition of a citizen developer from PMI (Project Management Institute):
Low-code or no-code development is the creation of applications software using graphic user interfaces or minimal basic code instead of large strings of complex coding. This term is often used to describe citizen development processes and technology. Low-code and no-code technology provides visual drag-and-drop or point-and-click user interfaces, making them easy for anyone to use.
Source: PMI
In this conversation on the Citizen Development Live podcast, Neil and I discuss various spreadsheets I've built in the past, when to move beyond spreadsheets, and why citizen development is a growing trend within the enterprise. I referred to a talk I gave at the 2019 No-Code Conference where I spoke about building tools with spreadsheets (and why the spreadsheet is the real first no-code tool):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1GAArkYfug
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