ARTICLE
HOW TO ORGANIZE A SUCCESSFUL CITIZEN DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM?
24.1.2024 | 2 minute read
Author
PAIJU KOIVULA
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Strengthening the technological competence of employees is key if companies want to stay up-to-date in the changing operating environment. It is also a strategic step towards more efficient scaling of automation.
Over the years, we have organized several Citizen Development programs for our clients, enabling them to achieve impactful results. You can explore our client Elenia’s Citizen Development program in more detail by watching the video below:
Watch the video above to see how Elenia uses Citizen Development to scale automation. We have already delivered two training programs to Elenia since 2020.
Why should you organize a Citizen Development program?
- Guaranteed results: The program teaches you how to develop automation in practice, and not just in theory.
- Mentoring supports effective learning: The practical work done in the course and the code-review and mentoring provided by Sisua ensure that theory is transferred into practice.
- Professional capital increases: The professional capital of employees increases with the program. The program aims to ensure that the new citizen developers are ready to perform automation certification.
How to get started with the Citizen Developer program?
- Preparation and launching the training
- On-site training/classroom training
- Mentoring
- Code-review of implementations
You should plan the first training more carefully and think about which skills would be the most useful for the company and how you want to tailor the content of the training to your own needs.
Curating the participants is also important – it is worth evaluating who are suitable in terms of initial skills and who are also enthusiastic to learn and interested in the field of automation. It is essential to likewise provide ongoing support to the developers during and after the training.
Teaching can be done face-to-face or remotely. The advancement the participant’s own project is part of the training, which is supported by mentoring. If necessary, we organize clinics or inquiry sessions with our customers, where development problems can be brought up and we try to find solutions together. The last step of the training is the code review. When the participants’ own implementations are ready, we will give suggestions on how the implementation could possibly be improved.
Before organizing the program, it is also important to set the goals for the training. Goals are always tailored to the company’s needs, but below is one example of what kind of goals can be set.
Goals for organizing a successful Citizen Development program
Participants know how to develop simple automations
- They understand the structure of automations
- Version control
- Error management, logging
Participants know how to model their own unit’s processes into automation use cases
- Participants grasp the key benefits, opportunities, and limitations of automation and robotics.
- Participants develop one implementation during the training
- Participants know the basics of Orchestrator (if using UiPath tool for example)
After the training, the participant understands the possibilities and limitations of automation. Its purpose is that there would be more automation development ideas and that they would be directly usable. After the training, participants have a clear understanding of how robotics functions and what is advisable and feasible to do with it. They also gain insights into where it might not work well, enhancing the quality of potential automation ideas generated post-training.
In the training, the participants also get to make automations in practice themselves. Automation development is a skill that is not only learned by reading, but requires that the participants get to try and learn how to use the tool themselves. Some more demanding features, such as using UiPath’s Orchestrator, can be taught to the most advanced and interested.
The content of the training also includes goals related to the company’s development environment, such as the goals below.
Participants' goals related to the company's development environment:
- Integrating participants into the CoE and operating model, if one exists
- Get to know the company’s most commonly used systems and their automation libraries: In the training, it is worth informing about the existing libraries, because they can be used again, in which case there is no need to do the same work many times. Maintenance of automations also becomes easier when the libraries are standardized. If, for example, there is an update to a system, updating the library will update all the automations at the same time. This saves a lot of work time and effort.
- Know how to read and create consistent documentation about automations: Another important aspect is to establish consistent automation development. The participants must know how to make documentation of their own implementations and also read the documentation of others and, if necessary, help others with the implementations or use other people’s implementations in other units. This reduces the risks, because without sufficient documentation it is difficult to find out if an enthusiastic employee has done many automations, but there is no information about them.
- Development of general operating methods and practices: It’s worth considering how participants can advance automation ideas and implementations in the company. Where can they seek assistance in development, or what if the automation doesn’t perform as expected? Having Sisua as a partner helps address more challenging issues, and we provide our customers with an internal ticketing system for seamless support
What kind of results can be expected?
When the training is over, the end result is as many automated processes as there are participants. Completed projects and automations go directly to CoE’s desktop. CoE takes over the automations and maintains them and supports them if necessary.
Our customer Elenia, is a great example of how Citizen Development programs can effectively scale automation in a short period of time. The citizen developer model is not tool-dependent; instead, it integrates seamlessly with tools like UiPath and MS Power Platform. Sisua Digital is a partner with both UiPath and Microsoft.
If you are interested in reading more about Elenia’s results and KPIs for their program, read this story.
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