Foundations of Citizen Development

This unit introduces citizen development, shadow IT, and the organizational dynamics that shape workplace adoption of digital tools and low-code automation. Students analyze historical context, stakeholder roles, maturity models, and risk trade-offs to prepare for hands-on design, governance, and scaling in subsequent units.

Learning Objectives

• Analyze the causes, risks, and benefits of shadow IT and citizen automation by synthesizing case examples from lessons such as “Bringing ‘Shadow IT’ Into the Light” and “Citizen Automator”
• Evaluate the roles of insiders, outsiders, and citizen developers in organizational improvement by mapping stakeholder relationships and decision pathways from provided scenarios
• Apply maturity-model criteria to assess an organization’s readiness for citizen development and prioritize improvement targets using a rubric derived from lesson content
• Demonstrate the ability to construct a basic go-forward plan that addresses risk tolerance, governance checkpoints, and scaling considerations (including target benefits and launch preparation) for a proposed citizen development initiative