For those new to the concept, democratisation of development refers to enabling more people within an organisation, especially those with deep business knowledge, to build enterprise-grade integrations. The idea is to empower them to do this with minimal support from IT, thereby reducing the burden on central tech teams. The goal is to increase innovation, boost productivity, and lower development costs. Ideally, this should also prevent business teams from going around IT to procure their own tools and platforms.
Despite the promise, the concept never reached the broad adoption many had hoped for. Why? There are several reasons, but a key one was that the available platforms simply weren’t mature or user-friendly enough to onboard citizen developers effectively. They often lacked the necessary features, usability, and governance capabilities to support this shift.
Fast forward to 2025, and the landscape has changed. Today, multiple platforms are well-equipped to support this movement. That’s great news for both business and IT. Choosing a platform that offers strong support for no-code/low-code development and is designed with enterprise usability in mind is a solid first step.
However, technology alone isn’t enough. To truly succeed with your democratisation initiative, there are still a few critical success factors to consider, factors that can help ensure you get both scale and sustainability from your efforts.
Here are six key success factors that can significantly increase your chances of making democratised development a sustainable reality.
1. Define patterns
Start by identifying and documenting a few common and relatively basic integration and automation patterns that recur across your organisation and could serve as candidates for citizen developers or builders. Patterns provide a shared language and reduce ambiguity, giving citizen developers a foundation to start from. Other advantages of starting with proven models include lower cognitive load and promoting consistency, scalability, and reliability in solutions in particularly when combined with templates.
2. Create templates
Based on the initial patterns you’ve identified, define a set of templates that builders can use as the starting point for their solutions. Templates lower the barrier to entry for new builders. They provide structure without being overly prescriptive, allowing users to start from a working baseline instead of a blank page. This is particularly powerful when targeting non-traditional developers like business analysts, product managers, or operations staff who may not write code but can extend templates to meet their needs
3. Build common components
To truly enable scalable democratisation, invest in building shared, composable components like APIs, reusable connectors and service wrappers. These foundational building blocks allow citizen developers to focus on business logic rather than struggling with technical details. By exposing core capabilities through well-documented and easy-to-use components, you can create a powerful internal ecosystem that accelerates solution development while maintaining architectural integrity. Much like templates, these components offer a reliable starting point—removing complexity and enabling developers to build with confidence, speed, and consistency.
4. Define guardrails
Democratisation doesn’t mean a lack of control, it means safe empowerment. Guardrails ensure that teams can move fast without breaking things, while still aligning with organisational standards. These could include access controls, rate limits, data handling rules, and audit trails. Which can be enforced in different ways, such as through platform features or policy-as-code. Thoughtfully designed guardrails promote creativity and freedom within well-understood boundaries, keeping systems secure and compliant. And let’s not forget: in most cases, the solutions will eventually be maintained and supported by IT, so setting clear boundaries from the start helps avoid future operational debt.
5. Review the solutions
A key success factor in democratised environments is establishing a lightweight but effective review and feedback loop. Whether it’s peer reviews, automated linting, or periodic audits, solution reviews help maintain quality, catch potential issues early, and reinforce a learning culture. Reviews also serve as a great opportunity for cross-pollination: citizen developers learn from seasoned engineers, and vice versa. It’s not about bureaucracy, it’s about collective ownership and continuous improvement.
6. Find one or several champions
A champion is typically a citizen developer: someone from the business side who has embraced the tools, learned by doing, and is eager to share that knowledge. They might not have a formal IT background, but they bridge the gap between technology and business needs. Champions mentor peers, promote reusable assets like templates and patterns, and help spread best practices across teams. A few engaged champions can spark a movement, drive adoption, and serve as essential connectors between platform teams and the broader user base. Empower them, recognise their impact, and let their energy fuel wider transformation.
To summarise, the success of this initiative relies on having both a platform and a way of working that enables the shared responsibility of development, empowering more people to build, while maintaining quality, control, and consistency. The goal is to increase the speed of development and innovation without compromising standards. After all, the purpose of IT is to support and enable the business. Without business value, there’s no point in building anything at all.