Citizen Development is the model in which business teams create and adjust their own processes without writing code and without opening a request to the IT team for every change, within defined rules, integration, and security. In this video, Daniel Gomes, General Manager of Masterlink, explains why the IT team should not solve everything and what changes when the business gains autonomy.
Video in Portuguese, with Portuguese subtitles.
In Summary
- Forms, workflows, reports, and approvals end up in the same IT team queue, alongside security, integrations, and strategic projects.
- For Daniel Gomes, the problem is not the IT team. It is the model.
- The solution is not to give more work to the IT team, nor to let each department create its own solutions. It is to give autonomy to the business, but within rules.
- The question the organization should ask: are we using the IT team for what truly only they can do?
Everything ends up with the IT team
“We have to ask the IT team for that.” This is a phrase Daniel Gomes says he hears often in organizations. Creating a form, changing a workflow, producing a report, automating an approval, or adapting a process that has changed: it all ends up in the same queue.
Why the backlog never stops growing
The IT team already has a lot on its hands: ensuring security, integrations, infrastructure, support, and strategic projects, while also responding to the needs of the entire organization. That is why the backlog never stops growing.
The problem, Daniel Gomes argues, is not the team. It is the model. Organizations have been built where almost every digital need, even the most operational ones, depends on technical resources that are scarce, expensive, and hard to free up. It is then no surprise when digital transformation moves slowly.
A simple process that should be quick
Picture a department that needs to create a form, define a workflow, assign responsibilities, and track the process. None of this involves any major technological innovation. But if everything has to join the IT team’s queue, it can take weeks, not because it is difficult, but because there are competing priorities.
An organization caught between two realities
The business knows exactly what it needs. The IT team cannot respond to everything at once. And the organization is caught between these two realities.
The solution: autonomy within rules
The solution, according to Daniel Gomes, is not to give the IT team more work. Nor is it to let each department create its own solutions, because that leads to more Excel spreadsheets, more applications, and more isolated processes, until, after a while, no one knows where the information is.
The balance lies in between: giving business areas autonomy, but within rules. This is what is now called Citizen Development. In practice, it means allowing teams to create and improve processes without depending on the IT team for every small change, but always in an organized, integrated, and secure way.
How the Masterlink Platform makes this possible
The Masterlink Platform allows business areas to create and evolve processes with autonomy, without writing code, without opening requests to the IT team for every change, and without creating new isolated applications within the organization. Everything happens on a common basis, with defined rules, integration between systems, security, governance, and total visibility for the IT team.
The result, in Daniel Gomes’ words: the business gains speed, and the IT team gains time for what truly creates value.
The question your organization should ask
At its core, the question is no longer “do we need more people on the IT team?”. It is this: are we using the IT team for what only they can truly do? When the business gains autonomy and technology stops being a bottleneck, digital transformation no longer depends on a queue of requests and finally starts to gain speed.
Frequently asked questions
It is the model that allows business teams to build and adjust processes with autonomy, maintaining governance, security, and total visibility for the IT team.
No. According to Daniel Gomes, when each department creates its own solutions, more Excel spreadsheets, more applications, and more isolated processes appear, until no one knows where the information is. Citizen Development provides autonomy within rules, on a common basis.
In the model described in the video, no. Everything happens on a common basis, with defined rules, integration between systems, security, and governance, and the IT team maintains total visibility.
The Masterlink Platform allows for the creation and evolution of processes without writing code.
