Why Citizen Development is Core to Digital Transformation 2.0

My favorite Ferris Bueller quote is, "Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it." I can make the same argument on emerging technology and digital transformation.

“What we thought was emerging tech two years ago is not so emerging anymore. There are platforms, technologies, and practices to bring many of these areas (AI, ML, IoT, automation, AR/VR edge computing, for example) to mainstream companies. And so, I think companies have to be a lot more aggressive around their investments in what we used to call emerging two years ago, and how it’s going to impact their business over the next three years.”

What is Digital Transformation 2.0 - Isaac Sacolick

I said these remarks on the Intelligent Automation Radio podcast (listen on iTunes, Spotify, Google, Amazon, or read the full transcript here) where I answered a key question from Guy Nadivi, Show Host & Senior Director of Marketing at Resolve.io. His question was, “What is Digital Transformation 2.0?”

A Very Brief Answer to What is Digital Transformation 2.0

Digital transformation 2.0 is a term I’ve been using in my latest keynotes around what CIO, CDO, and IT Leaders must be doing now to prepare their businesses for the next wave of digital opportunities and disruptions.

Here’s what I say in the podcast. 

“2019 was the last time [CIO] really had a strategic plan put in front of the board about growth and about changing the business model, because 2020, of course, we were stuck in COVID. And now here we are in 2021, and the world is really different. And we’re not really sure if we’re going to be “back to normal” in 2022 or 2023. What are permanent changes?”

I’ll be sharing more about digital transformation 2.0 in a future post.  But today, here’s one point I make in the podcast that I’d like to share

I've never met an IT department and a CIO that's come back and said to me, "Isaac, we have all the people to meet all the demands for application modernizations, for integrations, for automations, for all the data and analytics that we want to provide. We can do everything everybody's is asking for." 

That’s not the reality for any CIO I know. We’re always prioritizing because digital transformation drives demand for new apps, modernizations, automation, integration, and analytics.

Why Citizen Development? Doing More and Better Tech Without More

So that’s where citizen development, low-code, and no-code can be a game-changer. 

There’s a lot of people who are more digital-centric. Sometimes we call them digital natives. They’ve been using technology their entire lives, but they don’t want to work in IT. They want to work in marketing. They want to work in operations or sales. And they say, “I think I can do use technology to improve the business and operation. I think I can automate more. I can take something and make it more data-centric and put the right dashboards so that people can make better decisions.”

This is the charter of citizen development and using low-code and no-code platforms.

Digital transformation 2.0 is a strategy reflecting our new normal; changing customer needs, supply chain risks, and a greater business need on system reliability, performance, security, and safety. CIO and IT need to do more - but without more people, skills, time, manual processes, or technical complexities.

Learn more in the podcast!

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About Isaac Sacolick

Isaac Sacolick is President of StarCIO, a technology leadership company that guides organizations on building digital transformation core competencies. He is the author of Digital Trailblazer and the Amazon bestseller Driving Digital and speaks about agile planning, devops, data science, product management, and other digital transformation best practices. Sacolick is a recognized top social CIO, a digital transformation influencer, and has over 900 articles published at InfoWorld, CIO.com, his blog Social, Agile, and Transformation, and other sites. You can find him sharing new insights @NYIke on Twitter, his Driving Digital Standup YouTube channel, or during the Coffee with Digital Trailblazers.