What are your thoughts on citizen developed applications (also called end user computing) without the knowledge or participation of the IT department?
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CIO in Software3 years ago
I think it is fair to answer, it depends. If it something developed by an individual to increase their productivity, I have no issue and that has been happening for years already. If it is supposed to support a group of users, then I get more concerned about sustainability of that solution over the long run. In those cases, I would prefer to partner with these folks to document, create/buy, and manage the solution so that it becomes something that can outlast individual creators and provide value to a broader range of folks in the company.Director Certifications in Education3 years ago
How about your thoughts on corporate policy on citizens develop applications? Should there be a policy prohibiting such user developed application? Or giving user the flexibility to being creative to improve productivity?
CIO in Software3 years ago
A mix of both actually. I prefer providing the freedom and flexibility to develop solutions to innovate and improve coupled with the guardrails of what I already outlined in my previous reply. The goal is not stifle creativity and innovation within the company while trying to provide the right tools, environments, and processes to make it sustainable.
VP of IT in Software3 years ago
Who cares. Organizations should have a conversation about managing risk. If those that create risk are approved to accept that risk and understand that risk does it matter.
What does make sense it to ensure that you are aware of what you are doing and make sure that you can make the right risk decision. If the app contains PII or PHI then perhaps you need to let IT do it. Other organization may think anything customer facing or whatever. Where that line is might be different but it should be an intelligent decision.
In some organization, IT takes on a broker role to help support these initiatives and to help the business find the right partners. In others, IT provide resources to help with specific challenges with these initiates. In still others, most of IT is getting imbedded into the business areas or even becoming part of the business teams. All of these are good .... if they maximize the delivery of business value while appropriately managing risk.
The problem is that most organization don't have open discussion about how they want to make these decisions. Many keep the accountability for security risk on IT while allowing others unknowingly or in secret take on risk. This is the problem.
I do think it benefits IT to invest more in actually being agile rather than doing agile. Focus a lot of attention on the up-front product management roles and ensuring those parts work. Utilizing things like garage models or design thinking to better integrate the business and IT teams as part of the process. Remove big up-front design/architecture/governance that add significant time with no business benefits other than illusionary warm fuzzies.