Introduction

The phrase “citizen development” has spread quickly in recent years, usually framed as a solution for digital transformation (DX) and the shortage of IT engineers. Yet whenever we try to grasp what it really means, shadows from the past creep in.

—EUC (End User Computing). Kami Excel. Assets handcrafted by frontline workers once looked like saviors, only to age into negative legacy.

Context: In Japanese companies, Kami Excel (literally “god-tier Excel”) is a tongue-in-cheek term for massive spreadsheets full of macros and interlinked formulas that temporarily rescue frontline teams but later become unmaintainable. EUC took root in Japan as a pragmatic way for business units to solve problems faster than centralized IT, at the cost of long-term governance.

This series traces the future of citizen development by moving through history → the present → the era of generative AI → future scenarios.

Series roadmap

Part 1: “Is Citizen Development the Return of EUC?—Lessons from Kami Excel”

Citizen development is not new; it is EUC rebooted. We review the history of EUC and Kami Excel to understand the pattern of short-term wins turning into long-term liabilities.

Part 2: “Was Kami Excel Truly the Villain?—From Savior to Negative Legacy”

Kami Excel was not evil; it was a necessary—and culturally specific—solution of its time. The real issue was the organization’s inability to govern what frontline teams created.

Part 3: “The Light and Shadow of Modern Citizen-Development Platforms”

RPA, no-code, and low-code platforms spread thanks to an executive-friendly “visualization bias,” yet they easily turn into black boxes and risk becoming worse liabilities than Kami Excel ever was.

Part 4: “The Legacy That Generative AI Saves—and the Legacy It Abandons”

We can decipher and port code with generative AI, but no-code or RPA assets resist rescue. The debts that remain will be those “never written as code.”

Part 5: “Citizen Development Isn’t Omnipotent—It Is “Draft Development””

Citizen development should not ship production systems; its value lies in making requirements visible as a living draft.

Part 6: “Misaligned Vantage Points Mass-Produce Negative Legacy”

Liabilities proliferate not because of tooling but because top management—which ought to be long-term by design—chases short-term wins. Executives, frontline teams, and IT each must own their share of responsibility.

Part 7: “Legacy Will Keep Being Born—Tame It Anyway: A Future Vision for Citizen Development”

Legacy is inevitable. The key is not to avoid it, but to delay debt and domesticate it so it can be rescued when necessary.

What the series concludes

  • Citizen development is not all-powerful. It does not build production systems; at best it works as a first prototype and a language for requirements.

  • Negative legacy is inevitable. Excel, RPA, and code-based systems alike turn into legacy over time. The only real difference is whether we can salvage them.

  • Generative AI changes the game. It dramatically raises our ability to interpret coded assets, giving us a real chance to rescue some legacy. But no-code and RPA artifacts remain difficult to save and may become the most toxic debt of all.

  • Responsibility and governance are the fulcrum. Executives, frontline teams, and IT must each take responsibility appropriate to their vantage point and act as translators between them.

Summary

Citizen development is marketed as “democratized development,” yet its reality threatens to replay history. What we need for the future is to abandon the fantasy and anchor it in reality.

Citizen development is not the star of the future. It can, however, become a powerful drafting tool for requirements. Legacy is not something to erase; it is something to tame.

Across this series, I aim to sketch the “right future form” of citizen development.

Time will tell whether that forecast comes true.