There’s a fundamental shift taking place in the role of developers — no longer are they solely responsible for the back-end, but are now moving to the forefront of business decision making. This is evident across the board, with 62% of developers having an influence on purchasing decisions, and almost a third actually choosing their own tools independently.
As companies continue to adopt AI into the very core of their operations, both the business and technology sides of organisations have to work ever closer together to drive change. Business users are becoming more closely involved in technology and asking for specific outcomes from data. This, in turn, is giving rise to the notion of ‘citizen developers’ — technically inclined people on the business side, are also growing in importance, forging the business-technology link even further.
Developers have the vision to solve cross-functional problems and deliver scalable, governed solutions to business problems and objectives, building apps and technology that help organisations innovate and deliver for their customers. On top of this, developers are regularly required to adapt to new challenges and a rapidly evolving technological landscape, especially in the age of AI, ensuring that the tech continues to deliver for the company.
In this environment, developers who can understand both the technical side and how to deliver commercial value are becoming indispensable assets. Citizen developers should only aid this, easing the load for their traditional counterparts. But as this community evolves, those seeking engagement with it must evolve too.
The changing dev toolbox - open source & AI
One of the catalysts for this change is open source. As a key foundation for developers, open source enables faster innovation by offering ready-made tools and collaboration. Open source’s vibrant community also offers a crucial way for developers to learn, share knowledge, and solve problems together.
Likewise, AI is offering a helping hand to developers in the form of coding assistants and other generative tools. Developers are not going to be ‘replaced by AI’, though they are not writing as much code as they once did. By streamlining repetitive tasks, AI tools give developers the room to experiment and focus on higher-value tasks for the business, thus boosting overall productivity.
However, AI must of course be used with the appropriate guardrails. Having oversight of the end-to-end workflow from data sources to the end-user is crucial for avoiding issues around governance and security. So, while there are positives there is also caution; business leaders must remain close to this transformation.
The rise of the citizen developer
Given the pace and demands of change, businesses are looking beyond traditional dev roles and empowering a new class of creators. Citizen developers combine a ‘can-do’ attitude with enough technical aptitude to get to grips with low-code and AI-powered coding tools. This is changing the way organisations approach problems, with business leaders able to accelerate innovation independently, especially when it comes to departmental or domain-specific needs.
The growth of Python has also enabled citizen developers to get to grips with more complex problems. Python is widely accessible and has a robust ecosystem of tools and resources to support citizen developers, without requiring them to write complex boilerplate code. Enterprise platforms are also combining programming languages with AI in ways which make coding far easier with techniques such as text-to-SQL, helping drive business productivity.
While they can share the weight of work often handled by their conventional counterparts, citizen developers also introduce new challenges. Tech platforms and IT teams must ensure that resources and support are there to ensure high levels of software quality and performance.
Why DevRel needs to adapt
A key way to support both professional developers and citizen developers is through modern, fluid DevRel (Developer Relations) strategies. As DevRel builds relationships between organisations and the developer community, as a function, it must adjust to centre on developers who are fluent in open-source and also highly AI-literate.
The growth in citizen developer numbers especially reinforces the need to be flexible. DevRel strategies have to work to support both professional developers who build and maintain secure infrastructure and less experienced citizen developers who will benefit from templates, training and guardrails. Organisations must work to enable both groups to collaborate, share insights and innovate safely in a unified environment, consolidating disparate approaches and creating the foundation of future success.
This will foster stronger relationships between businesses and developers, and help developers advocate for certain tools and innovations. Developer feedback will become crucial for identifying what can be improved, and will fuel innovation over time. As citizen developers are also very much the users as well as now the builders, their feedback specifically can become a goldmine.
Strategic enablers of the future
The combination of open source approaches, AI tools and the democratisation of development is a potent trifecta. But in the long-term, it is most certainly the collaboration between developers and citizen developers that will help businesses meet their goals in the fast-changing tech landscape we are seeing today.
Traditional developers face a vastly different landscape, and citizen developers are there to complement this, not create more difficulty. Developers bring deep technical skills, while citizen peers bring speed and business context. If companies can unite these two strengths successfully, they’ll be able to reduce IT backlogs, fix talent shortages and accelerate business success.
James Hall
James Hall is Vice President & General Manager UK&I at Snowflake. A proven sales leader with over 25 years of success in Data, AI, and IT solution sales, including more than 15 years in senior leadership, James is experienced in building and scaling high-performing sales teams across Europe, securing flagship clients, and driving regional revenues exceeding $500M from some of the world’s leading enterprises.
