--- title: "Citizen Developers on the Rise: IT Skills Gap Creating New Career Opportunities for Business-Focused Employees" description: Companies and enterprises face a key shortage of information system technologists. This IT skills gap increases the career value and organizational impact of business-focused employees who implement robust, self-built applications. image: https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/IT%20skills%20gap%20citizen%20developers.png --- [![Kintone](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/logo_kinton_black.svg)](https://www.kintone.com/en-us/) [![Kintone](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/logo_kinton_black.svg)](https://www.kintone.com/en-us/) ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_search_black.svg) - Product Product![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_plus.svg)![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_back.svg) - Product ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_plus.svg) ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_back.svg) - [Intro to Kintone](https://www.kintone.com/en-us/intro/) - [Why Kintone](https://www.kintone.com/en-us/why-kintone/) - Features ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_plus.svg) ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/KintoneGlobal/svg/icon_back.svg) - 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[![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/2018%20S2/assets/kin-heart-white.png) ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/2018%20S2/assets/kin-heart-grey.png) ![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/2018%20S2/assets/kin-heart-red.png) Company + Product](https://blog.kintone.com/company-news) - Business with Heart <3Operations for the Digital First Team - [Company + ProductLatest News from Kintone](https://blog.kintone.com/company-news) - [Business with Heart <3Operations for the Digital First Team](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart) ![IT skills gap citizen developers.png](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/IT%20skills%20gap%20citizen%20developers.png) [Digital Transformation,](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart/tag/digital-innovation) [Workplace Productivity,](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart/tag/workplace-productivity) # Citizen Developers on the Rise: IT Skills Gap Creating New Career Opportunities for Business-Focused Employees Jun 14, 2017   |   by [Kintone Team](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart/author/kintone-team) [Tweet](https://twitter.com/share) Companies and enterprises face a key shortage of information system technologists. This IT skills gap increases the career value and organizational impact of business-focused employees who implement robust, self-built applications. This article explains how to take advantage of the citizen developer movement and field multi-user business apps that positively impact both your company and your career. ## Understanding the IT Skills Gap The University of Birmingham Collat School of Business [published an infographic](http://businessdegrees.uab.edu/resources/infographics/the-it-skills-gap/) containing a stunning array of information regarding the IT skills gap. This infographic describes the potentials for citizen developers to step in and fill the need to develop multi-user, business-grade applications.  ## Key Take-Away Facts **Forty percent of the companies have a moderate to major IT skill gap. ** IT departments within these companies cannot fill all of their open employment positions. Hence, they often do not have the workforce necessary to address their end users’ application development needs.  The fundamental issue then becomes a widening of the “IT Application Gap.” **Approximately 80 percent of the “pacesetter companies” encourage their citizen developers to design and deploy self-built apps.** Whereas in the past, “build your own app” initiatives were perhaps excluded from mainstream IT, innovative organizations now include citizen developer app deployments as a valued part of their IT strategy. **Sixty-three percent of the citizen developers deploy solutions without engaging their IT departments.** Citizen developers work within specialized cloud-based solutions that are specifically engineered to support “no-code” app development and collaborative system deployment. With more than 6,000 customers across industries, Kintone is widely-regarded by industry analysts as a market leader in this technology. **Nearly 40 percent of non-citizen developers expect a promotion within the next year whereas 53 percent of the citizen developers expect a promotion.** Citizen developers provide a valuable service to their organization and are doing so during a time where the “IT Skills Gap” is driving a deeper need for employees who can self-develop business-grade apps. This self-built career capability can create improved employment opportunities and promotions. ## Pick the Best Spot for Impact There are four “niches of need” that consistently produce business-impactful results: spreadsheet/data sharing, workflow management, line of business application deployment and team collaboration. Kintone is engineered to enable citizen developers to start within one of these “niches of need” or engage them all through the deployment of a unified, multi-user app. ## Start Simple and Expand Kintone is accessed through a cloud-based portal. The Kintone portal can support any number of users and provides guest users with the capability to participate within the app and collaborative environments. Successful citizen developers often “start simple” and build modest apps that engage a few team members. Once proven successful, the self-built apps can be interactively expanded, and users can be added on an as-needed basis. ## How to Get Started The [Kintone trial journey](http://kintone.com/trial/) takes citizen developers into the heart of the “build your own app” experience. Within the four-week trial period, non-technical users can easily explore all of Kintone’s features and invite team members to experience their personal digital workspace.  Both “build from scratch” and “pre-built” apps can be designed, tested, and launched with enterprise-class security. Through Kintone's 30-day free trial, you can start your journey and demonstrate that the IT skills gap does not have to mean an application gap will exist within your company or department. 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After more than a decade as a core platform for project scheduling and portfolio management, the service will no longer be available after that date. But for many teams, this retirement is also... [Read More »](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart/replace-microsoft-project-online-with-no-code-tools) [![](https://blog.kintone.com/hubfs/Kintone%20%281%29-4.png)](https://blog.kintone.com/business-with-heart/tribal-knowledge-into-team-knowledge) Digital Transformation ##### How to Turn Tribal Knowledge Into Team Knowledge Every team has someone who just knows how things work. They know which vendor to call when a shipment stalls. They remember the workaround for the billing system glitch that was never fixed. They can close out a monthly report in 20 minutes because they built ... 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