This isn’t shadow IT, says Braun. “It is intentionally blurring the line between business and IT to accelerate progress,” he says. “Furthermore, it provides telemetry data highlighting use cases and trends to better inform IT organizations of their core IT roadmap by providing citizen developers with the basic tools to quickly build solutions.”
Building an army of citizen data scientists
Telecommunications provider AT&T’s Chief Data Office (CDO) is the “north star” of data, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), serving as a catalyst to spread reusable capabilities across the company to support better data-driven decision-making. . says Mark Austin, vice president of data science.
“We used our business intelligence tools to give business managers self-service access to our ‘single version of the truth’ data set,” says Austin. “We are also expanding our low/no-code AI generation capabilities across the company. This opens up a larger segment of analytics talent beyond the code-savvy cohort within AT&T to create optimized and accountable AI solutions.”
AT&T’s CDO leveraged automation and data management tools and services from a variety of vendors, including Microsoft and Databricks, to mobilize this larger analytic talent, which it calls “the”, with a focus on developing analytics skills and growing its workforce.
“We are transforming the way AT&T employees navigate data and the AI lifecycle. [finding] and getting data; data engineering for machine learning; It’s all about creating, deploying, monitoring and managing the machine learning models used in artificial intelligence,” says Austin.
As a result, AT&T’s 300 professional data scientists far outnumber the 3,000 citizen data scientists from virtually every department across the company. “They are deploying and using AI in everything from marketing campaigns to network design and management to calculating the most efficient route for technicians traveling to customer service,” says Austin.
Austin says the combination of expert data scientists and citizen developers is “very powerful.” “Last year, AT&T identified $3.1 billion in business value from AI, including cost savings and additional revenue from AI-enhanced products and services,” he says. “This is an increase of 24% compared to the previous year and we expect the growth rate to increase.”
Empowering employees and customers
MDaudit, a medical technology software provider, uses ThoughtSpot’s AI-powered analytics platform called Thoughtspot Everywhere to help non-technical users create dashboards to better meet the needs of their teams.
For example, MDaudit CEO Ritesh Ramesh says that MDaudit’s product management team of more than 10 citizen developers created curated content for healthcare clients based on personas.
“These personas include executives, functional leaders, and operations staff who drive compliance, coding, and revenue integrity results,” says Ramesh.
In addition to internal teams, MDaudit has also enabled citizen developers in customer organizations to create their own dashboards and insights through MDaudit’s self-service model.
“Our solution enables healthcare executives to measure performance and outcomes in terms of team productivity as well as compliance and revenue risk,” says Ramesh.
Our approach to delivering curated insights and DIY development across our customer base has accelerated our ability to deliver insights to users at all levels in a timely manner to enable our clients to drive real-time decision-making. Ramesh says
For example, one of MDaudit’s clients has 15,000 suppliers and is looking for insights to continuously monitor risky suppliers to be audited almost weekly. “The analysis we provided [via citizen development] We help them do that.”
How to Succeed in Civic Development
Corporate IT leaders offer hard-won advice for those looking to make the most of citizen development strategies.
Focus on your business values. AT&T’s Austin says that, as with all technology projects, citizen developers should be encouraged to direct their efforts towards solutions that matter to the business.
“Our mission across CDO is not to invent or deploy technology for its own sake. Rather, our mission is to provide value to our company and our customers,” he says. “That mindset is important for professional data scientists and citizen developers alike. We encourage citizen data scientists to find and address employee and customer pain points.”
Build tools and support systems. Citizen development offers the temptation of not touching IT, but the strategy’s true rewards can only be realized through IT involvement and investment. “We launched a Center of Excellence to educate and support citizen developers. And it works,” he says. Of the more than 3,000 software bots created at AT&T, 92 percent are from business units, not CDOs, he says.
Communicate and train often. IT leaders must introduce an ongoing process to foster citizen development efforts through summits and additional training. “We have weekly or bi-weekly forums for sharing and reviewing use case results, and we hold meetings throughout the year,” says Austin. “We fund the platform centrally to avoid delays and make it available to people. [tools] It creates value.”
Open the path to your data. Chevron’s Braun says organizations need to embrace citizen developers as the driving force behind IT. “Demand for IT talent and services will always outstrip supply,” he says. “We need to ensure that anyone, regardless of their technical ability, can responsibly develop solutions to the problems they understand best.”
That means providing secure, reliable, and efficient designs and underlying technologies to ensure data access, says Braun. “This foundation gives IT clear telemetry data to ‘see’ what is being developed and used, bringing what may have once been shadow IT to the light,” he says.
Spotlight success. It’s also important to support citizen developers and encourage other leaders to do the same. “Some leaders ask potential citizen developers why they are doing ‘IT stuff’,” says Braun. “The reality is that in the future, everyone in an organization will be equipped with digital skills, a capability that was once considered only an IT responsibility. These skills only add more value to employees. Help others understand that dynamic.”
Lab safeguards. For civil development to work, it is important to have the right safeguards in place. “You can build a citizen developer program without increasing the risks seen in shadow IT,” says Braun. “Deploy engineered technology controls to manage production pathways and ensure that cyber, privacy, and operational risks are part of design, training, and expectations from the start.”