Introduction

Part 4 highlighted how assets that never became code may become tomorrow’s intractable debt. Now we must ask: Is citizen development really a way to build production systems?

The answer is no. Citizen development does not shoulder production. Its essence is capturing user requirements in a working “draft.”

Misunderstanding it as a magic tool that instantly builds systems repeats history and mass-produces debt. What does “draft development” mean, and how should we leverage it?

Context: Japanese teams sometimes talk about creating a shitagaki—a rough draft—before handing work to specialists. Citizen development fits this cultural rhythm. Business users can quickly capture their tacit knowledge in a working mock-up, while engineers translate it into robust software. The danger lies in mistaking the draft for the finished manuscript.

The full series

What is the value of draft development?

Citizen-development artifacts often look “unfinished” or “rough.” That roughness is precisely what makes them valuable.

Requirements emerge from the user’s perspective

Imagine a sales team building a customer-management app with a low-code tool. Their everyday intuition about what “convenience” feels like surfaces:

  • The granularity of input fields.
  • The order of columns on a list view.
  • Button placement and natural flows.

These nuances never appear in a textual requirements document. Working prototypes draw authentic reactions: “This works,” or “This would still be painful.”

Misunderstandings and omissions surface early

With a live draft:

  • “We need a search feature here.”
  • “The approval flow should be two steps, not three.”

In traditional development, specialists read specifications and imagine the system. Production then triggers complaints about mismatched expectations and rework. Citizen development can slash that wasted loop.

The trap of promoting drafts to production

Never ship the draft as-is. Doing so hides major pitfalls:

  • Scalability: It may work for a small team but crumble company-wide.
  • Security: Access control and logging are often insufficient for compliance.
  • Maintainability: Personalization reappears; if the author leaves, the system freezes.

“Drafts are valuable” does not mean “drafts are production-ready.” Doing so merely repeats the Kami Excel arc.

Division of labor with professionals

How should organizations treat citizen-development results? The answer is straightforward.

  • Citizens create the draft. They embody the user perspective and present a working prototype.
  • Professionals produce the clean copy. They rebuild with scalability, security, and maintainability in mind.

This division lets each side amplify its strengths. Citizens pour unfiltered field experience into the draft. Professionals guarantee quality and longevity.

Traditional development relied on documents and imagination. With drafts, discussions begin at a much higher resolution. The result: faster development and better products.

Governance guardrails

Healthy citizen development requires organizational rules:

  • Clarify: Declare that citizen-developed artifacts remain prototypes with limited scope.
  • Inventory: Regularly audit and retire abandoned apps or RPA bots.
  • Transition: Institutionalize the flow in which promising drafts move to IT for professional implementation.

With these guardrails we can avoid reproducing Kami Excel-style debt. Without them, citizen development degenerates into a “rogue app factory” that bloats technical debt.

Summary

Citizen development is not a magic path to production-grade systems. Used as a draft, however, it reduces misinterpretations and grounds design in real user needs.

Professionals deliver the final product; citizens sketch the draft. Honoring that division turns citizen development into a catalyst for sustainable productivity rather than negative legacy.

Its true meaning is “democratizing the requirements process.” Once organizations internalize that lesson, citizen development can become a durable strength.

Next: Misaligned Vantage Points Mass-Produce Negative Legacy (Part 6 of 7)