The term Citizen Developer was coined by Gartner, a leading Information Technology analyst firm, to describe the accelerating trend for individuals who are not trained in typical IT disciplines taking the lead in creating and evolving new business applications.
These individuals are typically knowledge workers who are closest to understanding the problem that they are trying to solve and the information that is needed or available. In the past these ambitious people may have been able to help create some limited, departmental applications using local productivity software such as Microsoft’s Office suite or others. But this movement has exploded over the last few years as the tools available have made it far easier to embrace critical, enterprise-wide application as well. As Kim sees it, this is a movement that is all about speed and responsiveness to a business world that moves too fast for traditional command-and-control structures of implementing information technology. And the Kim Platform is at the leading edge of those trends.
Kim is a unique product platform that has been designed from the ground up to be implemented and controlled by the Citizen Developer/Knowledge Workers in your organization. If you know how to use standard desktop productivity tools such as Microsoft Word or Excel, you will quickly learn how to configure and adjust the Kim platform, or one of the specific applications that have been built using its capabilities, even when you are using it for comprehensive, enterprise-wide projects. Therefore, the typical goal of a Kim client is to be self-sufficient, so they can just “get on” with using Kim to solve their business problems.
However, we recognize that the needs of our clients vary significantly, and even for those wishing to be self-sufficient, many projects start with a need for a well-defined set of capabilities that need to be achieved in the minimum amount of time and with the maximum business value. Kim has therefore established tailored implementation approaches to meet the diverse needs of our clients.