Citizen Developers: The New Accelerators for Digital Transformation

Abstract

In the context of this study, citizen developers are defined as individuals outside formal Information Technology (IT) departments who create applications using low-code/no-code platforms. The citizen developer role becomes pivotal as organizations navigate the intricate pathways to address increasing business demands for creating applications as part of their digital transformation journey. The driving force behind this paradigm shift lies in the ever-expanding appetite for software solutions that often eclipses the resource capacities of traditional IT departments. Consequently, companies are turning their attention toward citizen developers, entrusting them with crafting solutions. In this paper, we systematically review the existing literature to identify the factors contributing to citizen developers' effectiveness in creating applications. We discovered a lack of research papers discussing this topic. Our study fills this void and proposes a conceptual model to advance understanding of the factors that