January 17, 2025 • 28 mins
What if your next big innovation didn’t come from your IT department, but from a non-technical team member empowered to create AI-driven applications?
In this episode, host Andreas Welsch and guest Ian Barkin (Entrepreneur, Investor, and Author) explore the transformative potential of citizen development and its role in breaking down barriers to digital transformation.
We dive into how low-code and no-code platforms are enabling non-technical experts to build impactful applications, filling critical gaps in business processes. Together, we tackle pressing questions:
- How can businesses unlock the untapped potential of citizen developers to drive innovation?
- What does effective governance look like to prevent shadow AI from going rogue?
- Why is it essential for IT and business leaders to collaborate on citizen development initiatives?
You’ll also discover Ian’s 4G framework for managing citizen development programs and gain practical insights into bridging the gap between IT and business to achieve scalable AI success.
Whether you’re an IT leader, a business innovator, or simply curious about empowering your workforce to drive smarter solutions, this episode is packed with actionable strategies.
Ready to turn citizen development into a competitive advantage?
Don’t miss this episode—tune in now to discover how to turn the AI hype into tangible outcomes!
Questions or suggestions? Send me a Text Message.
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Disclaimer: Views are the participants’ own and do not represent those of any participant’s past, present, or future employers. Participation in this event is independent of any potential business relationship (past, present, or future) between the participants or between their employers.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andreas Welsch (00:00):
Today, we'll talk about scaling your AI
programs via citizendevelopment.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actually
written a new book about justthat.
Ian Barkin.
Hey Ian, thank you so much forjoining.
Ian Barkin (00:11):
Andreas, thanks for having me.
Awesome new intro, by the way.
That was very cool.
Thanks for letting me be part ofthat whole thing.
And in a thrill to be here.
I love the show.
I love the work you've done overthe last few years in educating
our community.
You are clearly an expertyourself and it's fun to be
here.
Happy 2025.
Andreas Welsch (00:28):
Happy 2025.
I couldn't be more excited tohave you on the show.
And we've talked about this fora couple of months actually
getting this lined up.
For those of you who don't knowyou in the audience, maybe you
can tell everybody a little bitabout yourself, who you are and
what you do.
Ian Barkin (00:42):
Yeah, my pleasure.
I am a combination of things.
I'm a BPO and an RPA guy.
And so what that meant was thebeginning of my career, I was
helping enterprises tap intoglobal talent, finding really
good, highly skilled people allover the world.
And about 12 years ago, that wasluckily the place where we
(01:02):
started to play with automationto augment and emulate some of
the work that those people weredoing.
And so that sent me on a mysecond sort of career journey,
which was around automation andhow do you digitize tasks in
enterprises, front, middle, andback office?
It resulted in launching an RPAconsultancy about 11 years ago.
(01:23):
Awesome journey, so much fun,built a great family, had a team
all over the world, worked withamazing clients and learned a
ton.
And and did that for a fewyears, sold it.
And since then have beenfollowing random passions.
I invest in AI startups and helpadvise them, hopefully with some
(01:44):
skills that I've picked up alongthe way.
I educate just as you do.
I've got LinkedIn Learningcourses, just as you do.
I've written some books just asyou have, and I just love being
part of this community.
Hopefully sharing usefulinformation for folks who were
starting their journey, who areexpanding their journey and
looking how to tap into what hasbeen an amazing set of
(02:07):
capabilities.
That's just so much more thanthose few tools we started
playing with 11, 12 years ago.
It's a, it is a robust andsometimes very confusing toolkit
we have available to us today.
Andreas Welsch (02:19):
Hey I must tell you, you've been a great
inspiration for me.
So with all the"just as you do",you actually went first and
you've inspired me to followthat path.
Ian Barkin (02:28):
I appreciate that.
Andreas Welsch (02:29):
LinkedIn Learning courses, the Creator
Accelerator Program, and justseeing what you do for the
community and how you share yourknowledge as well.
It's fun stuff.
Ian Barkin (02:37):
It is fun stuff.
And it's and there are skillsthat you collected through your
professional career that are soinvaluable and that you take the
time yourself to share them in away that's not just creating and
influencing for sake of being acreator or influencer, but
because you actually know it,you actually understand it,
resonates in everything you do.
And I'm thrilled if I could havebeen even the smallest of
(02:59):
inspirations to you on thatjourney.
Andreas Welsch (03:01):
Absolutely, yeah.
Now you've been on the showbefore, together with a few
other guests, but this time, Igot a surprise for you.
The same surprise that I got foreverybody.
Okay.
And so the little icebreaker,when I hit this buzzer over here
you'll see a sentence and I'dlike you to answer with the
first thing that comes to mindand why, and to make it a little
(03:23):
more interesting, you have 60seconds for your answer.
Probably, you've seen this bynow.
Ian Barkin (03:27):
Because it's a speed round for slow people.
Andreas Welsch (03:30):
Are you ready for What's the BUZZ?
Ian Barkin (03:32):
I am.
Let's do this.
Andreas Welsch (03:34):
Okay let's do this.
If AI were a sports car, whatwould it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Ian Barkin (03:44):
The Tesla Coupe.
The small little sporty one thathas yet to come back out again,
but it would be that.
Andreas Welsch (03:49):
And why?
Ian Barkin (03:51):
Cause it's wicked fast.
It is a lot of promise doesn'tnecessarily exist, yet.
But a lot of the mechanics andthe elements of it do exist.
And now we're just we're waitingto see it.
That sounds very negative aboutAI, but it is here in pieces and
parts.
Andreas Welsch (04:06):
Wonderful.
Sounds a little bit like a Teslaadvertisement.
Ian Barkin (04:09):
Yeah, exactly.
I do drive one, although I'mlooking at various other things
now.
There's some cool new vehiclesout there.
Andreas Welsch (04:16):
A little eco friendliness in the AI space
would go a long way too.
Ian Barkin (04:21):
That's true.
That's an interesting point.
Yes.
The Tesla doesn't consume allthe energy that LLMs do.
Andreas Welsch (04:26):
Not the one of an entire power plant.
Ian Barkin (04:29):
That's right.
Okay.
How did I do that was is thatthe only one because that was
faster than 60 seconds now wegot a vamp and fill time.
Andreas Welsch (04:37):
So definitely 60 seconds is over and it was a
wonderful answer.
We're obviously not just here totalk about random questions and
coming up with answers.
This topic of citizendevelopment is actually near and
dear to my heart because I'vespent a lot of time in IT and
even 10, 15 years back, gettingthe technology and what it can
(04:57):
do, as I mentioned in yourintro, there's just been so much
tech being layered on top ofeach other from RPA to machine
learning, generative AI, yes,there are all these
possibilities.
And, about two years ago, wewere saying you don't have to be
an AI expert to work in AI.
That's what your background isplus AI, and I think that's
(05:19):
still true, but if I look at myfeed, it seems that's truer than
ever with everybody all of asudden jumping on the bandwagon.
But I'm curious, how are youseeing this play out in
business, this whole topic ofcitizen development and what
should people know about thisgoing into it?
Ian Barkin (05:36):
Yeah so the reason I embarked on the research that
went into the book with mycoauthor, Tom Davenport, who is
a legend in many spaces and haswritten 25 books.
And so that was just a joy to beable to do that project with
him.
But the reason we embarked on itis because, as we said, 11, 12
years ago, there was thisconcept of automation that could
(05:58):
emulate the work that people wasdoing.
And so we embarked on that.
We took a look at it.
It was working.
But it still required somerigor.
It wasn't easy for a businessanalyst couldn't do it.
And yet the narrative in thespace was often, it's so easy, a
business analyst can do it.
And there was a lot of narrativearound just having everyone have
(06:20):
their own robot.
And that was, from a marketingand a sales perspective, totally
get it.
Understood why that was thenarrative, but from an execution
perspective, it was harder thanthat.
But then progressively overtime, and you mentioned there
were layers of higher complexitywith intelligent document
processing and machine learningand some other things, and
process mining and discovery,etc.
(06:41):
There became, there was still acommitment to that narrative of
making it easy enough that abroader audience and a broader
user base can actuallycapitalize on this set of
capabilities.
And so what happened is westarted to use, or vendors
started to use these terms lowcode and no code.
And I thought that was funnybecause ultimately it's weird to
(07:03):
name a software trend after thecomplexity of the tool.
I joke it's like calling a astick shift car harder to drive
and a manual car easy drive.
And like you can buy a harderdrive or an easier drive car,
what do you want?
And so lower code or no codereally was a way that we were
(07:25):
classifying technology thatrequired less coding, there's
more visual, more building withpuzzle pieces, drag and drop,
etc.
Unfortunately, even then, itstill wasn't so easy that a
business analyst could do it.
But, in the course of ourresearch, and actually, after we
went to press, this stuff isgetting easier and easier.
(07:47):
I'm ultimately prompting, whichis the ultimate in no coding,
where you're just using humanlanguage to articulate what it
is that you have dreamed up,that you'd to see turned into
something.
Sometimes it's an email,sometimes it's a poem, but
sometimes it's code andapplications and et cetera.
That is happening now at a ratethat we've never seen before.
(08:10):
And so this low and no code,whether we use those terms or
not are truly becoming possible.
And so what that meant wasdomain experts, the people who
understand the scope of the workthat they do.
If you're an HR and youunderstand employee onboarding,
if you're in finance andaccounting, and you are an
(08:31):
expert in accounts payable orreceivable or whatever else,
those domain experts now more sothan ever before in the history
of work and the history of workwith technology can turn those
domain expertise, those skillsthat they have and the needs
that they know that they have toget their job done more
efficiently.
They can start turning thoseinto applications, integrations,
(08:54):
and data models.
And so that's what I think is soexciting about citizen
development is there have alwaysbeen citizens developing for
them has been hard.
It's getting easier and easier.
And there's two reasons whythat's exciting.
One, because digitaltransformation requires a huge
number of people to contribute,and there just aren't enough IT
professionals to do that.
(09:14):
And two, IT and business havealways been an oil water dynamic
that don't understand eachother, don't really work well
together.
Not to say we don't, but if youhave the actual end user more
intimately involved in designingand executing that which they
dream up and need, man, this isa renaissance of digitization
(09:35):
across every enterprise of allsizes in every department, every
nook and cranny.
Citizen development for the win.
That was not a short synopsis,but I'm clearly passionate about
this stuff.
Andreas Welsch (09:49):
That's wonderful.
I read a post by Shail Khiyaraif you're leading an AI CoE,
some kind of an innovation CoEbecoming to bottleneck again as
well, and I was so reminded ofIT, because when I talk to IT
decision makers, they tell me,yeah, there are all these things
that we need to do and we havebacklog of things.
And even in my corporate careerin IT, you said, yeah you can
(10:10):
come back next year, maybe insix months, because we're really
busy with other things.
So I do see that promise.
And I do see that value ofcitizen development with certain
guardrails, certainly empoweringyour business, empowering your
users to do the things that areimportant.
Easy enough, scalable enough,yet less your security and your
(10:33):
integrity of the business.
Ian Barkin (10:34):
Totally agree.
By the way, it was that ITroadmap, right?
Necessities, mother ofinvention.
It was bottleneck was the motherof invention in the RPA days.
IT just could not get toprojects that business users
found useful and valuable.
And so they found a, an outlet,they found a way to work around
(10:55):
IT.
And that was RPA initially, andit's only getting easier.
It's only getting more powerful.
We assert in the book strongly aneed for governance, to your
point, and B, a need forcollaboration because otherwise
this becomes the grey IT roguedigital initiatives shadow that
you do not want in anyenterprise ever.
Andreas Welsch (11:20):
And by the way, it's great to see so many folks
joining.
Ramnath and Douglas and Stephen.
And Martin.
So thank you for being with us.
If you have any questions,please put them in the chat as
well.
And we'll pick them up in acouple of minutes.
I do want to make sure that thiscontinues to be an interactive
show.
That's why we are live.
So please keep your questions.
And easy.
All of that, and it's.
(11:42):
It's Tuesday, just afternoon inthe U.
S., so keep them easy, keep themlight.
But yeah, as we're alreadysaying that there's so much tech
in a business layered onuntapped potential.
So why do we talk about citizendevelopment?
Why do we need to say, inaddition to bottlenecks, what
are things that domain expertsin their respective business
(12:03):
functions can all of a suddendo, or what do they need to do?
Ian Barkin (12:07):
Yeah.
So I think there are tiers andlevels that, there's that which
is possible and that's, which isreasonable.
And again, in the book we mighttouch on this later, but we've
got several different frameworksand structures that we major on
both because we saw it happeningwithin the enterprises we
interviewed.
And also we knew it shouldhappen in any enterprise that
(12:28):
wants to embark on this.
But back to the fundamentalpoint, there's more work than
there are IT professionals to todo that work.
There is a greater level ofexpectation and marketing around
the potential for, let's call itAI.
And a lot under that umbrella,but a lot of people are hearing
(12:48):
a lot of things about it,especially in this era of AI
agents, where it seems like thatis just, All of the news, all of
the story, all of the update,all of the product release.
And every single majorenterprise now has agent as the
concept that they're organizingaround.
The lens through which we lookat the work that we do.
(13:09):
is heavily AI ified andagentified and we want to see it
used.
And so that automaticallycreates a massive supply demand
gap.
And there are, which I think isa good thing in so much as, In
the old days, you'd do sort ofcontinuous improvement exercises
(13:29):
and Kaizen and Lean exerciseswhere you'd study Pareto's and
whatever, I'm showing sort of mybackground, but you would
identify areas of opportunity.
This sort of is a shot in thearm for that initiative.
Everybody almost can't help butlook at their work through a
lens of what can automation dofor me.
(13:53):
Which is really exciting.
And the other thing that wefound in the book and in the
interviews that we had was thelevel of digital quotient, just
the shared vocabulary is suchnow that a business person and
an IT person that findthemselves in a collaboration
session or in a meeting room ofany sort are often.
Much closer together than theyever have been.
(14:16):
They're speaking similarlanguages.
They understand constraints.
They're discussing the art ofthe possible.
They know what the existingenterprise architecture enables
or constraints, and I thinkthat's been a huge asset just to
evolve that discussion to apoint where we can be
brainstorming what is possiblenow, it still comes back to, do
you have the capabilities?
(14:37):
Do you have the guardrails andgovernance internally?
And do you have the right toolsto enable that?
And that's up to an enterpriseand often leadership and IT to
decide on how to approach that.
Andreas Welsch (14:52):
Are you seeing that business is getting more
tech savvy and literate or IT isgetting more business?
What did you find in it?
Ian Barkin (15:01):
It's a great question.
I think it's more the formerthan the latter.
I believe that business isbecoming more tech savvy just
because of, and this is not thelast few weeks.
This is the last decade thatthey're becoming more tech
savvy.
But I also think it's it is.
As a necessity, it is requiringthat IT become more business
savvy because they are havingthose discussions with business
(15:23):
users.
And they're, they are, IT's roleis to support an enterprise,
right?
Every company is now a softwarecompany, but the company first
and foremost is a productcompany or a service company.
They have customers, they havestrategy, and supercharge that.
And we argue in the book that IThas to find a way to do two
(15:45):
things which is never easy, butone of them is the traditional
enterprise IT role.
Of making sure all of thetraditional systems, the ERP
systems and CRM systems, and nowmore and more the security and
compliance and regulatorycomponents of an enterprise are
sound and stable and safe.
(16:07):
They also have to build in thissort of guidance element, which
is one of the frameworks wetouch on which is around
educating and nurturing andshepherding a lot of efforts
that will happen whether theywant them to or not.
You don't have a choice, it'shappening, you do have a choice
about how you respond to it andhow you enable it.
You're never stopping it, Iwould argue.
(16:30):
You can try, but good luck.
Andreas Welsch (16:31):
That's a big realization for technology
driven departments.
It's happening and you get todecide, how much you will be
involved and how much controlyou can still exercise.
If at all, right?
It's all about guardrails not somuch the stopping.
Ian Barkin (16:47):
The framework in the book is a 4G framework and the
G's, the traditional G'severyone talks about and
constantly brings up aregovernance and guardrails.
And we added two more.
One of them was guidance is thatconcept of it being and not just
IT, but other elements of theorganization, educating,
supporting, sponsoring,coaching, et cetera.
(17:09):
But the first G, so we added afirst G, which is Genesis.
And the purpose of that was,Genesis is the beginning of
something.
And the purpose of that G wasultimately to explore that
concept that if you think You'respearheading this initiative in
your organization.
Quite frankly, you're wrong.
It is already there.
(17:30):
It is already started.
So you are not starting this.
The genesis of the theinnovation and the pension to
DIY or to make or to build or toiterate has always been in your
best people.
And they did it with Excelmacros beforehand.
They have more powerful versionsof tools to do that in today.
(17:54):
And so you just have torecognize that is happening
everywhere in your organization.
Hopefully, genuinely, hopefullyyou've got people who are.
Who are those creators andbuilders and makers who who
think big thoughts and solve bigproblems and try to make their
operations more efficient.
Now it's up to you to decide howyou enable them.
Andreas Welsch (18:13):
So I'm curious, building on this and what you
said earlier around exercisingsome kind of control or
guardrails coming back to your4Gs.
And I see doug is in theaudience today, Doug Shannon,
and he said, Hey, how do you seethe potential rise of shadow AI
code coming into play and how dowe verify that the code is safe,
is sound is well written to methat kind of goes into the
(18:35):
direction of how can you havesome some control over this
citizen development and how doyou make sure that what citizen
developers build is safe?
Ian Barkin (18:44):
So there's a lot of questions in there.
Yes, so ultimately a simpleanswer is you need to have some
form of platform, right?
You need to have some set oftools that are vetted and
approved by the enterprise thatyour citizens can work in.
Because the last thing you wantis, bring it from home.
(19:05):
Just chaos where everybody findstheir ends.
And by the way, in the old days,there were, there was a small
number of tools that they mightbe able to sneak into the
enterprise and start playingwith now.
It seems like that list isinfinite.
So this gets harder.
But you need to enable them withthe tools and that they, the
sort of the building.
Set that they can use and yousaw that you see that to some
(19:28):
degree with things like copilotin the Microsoft platform that
most enterprises have.
There are others that they mayhave already had in house.
And so some of the RPA platformsare well positioned.
And if you've got UiPath wall toceiling then that's a place
where you start to do thebrainstorming and look for ways
to to digitize more broadly.
So those are the sorts ofplatforms you need to lean on
(19:51):
because you don't want to enablejust a pure bring your own
device or bring your own.
Automation sort of mentality.
And then to the point of how doyou prevent shadow?
Again, it's around thoseguardrails of you can't build
anything.
And in the book we discussactually levels of remit.
(20:12):
So there's those things thatmatter to me to oversimplify it.
And then there's those thingsthat touch or matter to we.
And so if it's a me thing, it isan application that helps me do
my job.
It's probably on my desktop oris very localized.
Anything that starts to branchinto the we, which could be any
sort of crossing the.
(20:33):
boundaries into a differentdepartment or a client or a
vendor or a partner orsomething, those start to become
ones you want to govern morestrongly and keep an eye on and,
or bring in IT to support.
Cause I might have a great idea.
Like I am in accounts payableand I have just a really strong
(20:54):
idea for how to make it betterfor everyone.
But if it starts to get complex,I'm not the person to be
developing that.
So you bring in it to shepherdand to collaborate and to
support those sorts of effortsor to take them over all
together and to build thembecause it's a good idea.
And then the maintenance thingtoo.
The last thing you want is tohave necessarily citizens
(21:16):
maintaining their own and then,and some enterprises do go that
way where you have to make surethat you're updating it every
once in a while, or they killit, you have to maintain it or
it goes away.
But in the same old sort oflogic of in the old days, in
like a mainframe, Bob wouldbuild a great tool, but.
You kept Bob away from busroutes because you didn't want
(21:36):
to lose him because he's theonly one who knew how it works.
You've got a, obviously a planfor that sort of situation as
well.
So in general, robust, maturecitizen programs do involve IT
for the governance the guardrailing the remit elements, and
then ongoing maintenance andsupport.
Andreas Welsch (21:57):
And I think it also partly answers Ramnath's
question, who was asking, howfar, to what extent should you
let citizen developers buildtheir things?
What if it gets too broad, toomany users?
I think you, you nicely answeredthat there is some, some some
good measurements that you needto say, this is what I let them,
because it's me.
(22:17):
This is what maybe wecollaborate on together.
Ian Barkin (22:20):
Let's be clear.
At no point in time are wesuggesting that a citizen should
replace SAP for you, right?
We are not suggesting thatcitizens step in and retool your
ERP systems and rewire how theenterprise is working.
But there are, there's nearlyendless list of opportunities.
(22:44):
To transform and digitize andevolve every process within an
enterprise that domain expertsare closer to than it ever will
be, and they can make efforts toimprove them.
And if it gets bigger than thosevery discreet solutions, then
think, how lucky are we thatwe're able to have meaningful
(23:05):
brainstorms with the end userand then be able to put it on a
roadmap.
Collaborate with them, figureout what really great looks
like.
Not only does it solve bigproblems, it also keeps your
best people.
And those are two wins in mybook.
Andreas Welsch (23:20):
Awesome.
Speaking of book, what's thebook again where people can read
all about this?
Ian Barkin (23:25):
Oh, that's man, you just asked me to plug my own.
Andreas Welsch (23:29):
This guy.
Ian Barkin (23:30):
All Hands on Tech.
The AI Powered CitizenRevolution.
Andreas Welsch (23:33):
Awesome.
So definitely check that out,folks.
Now, Ian, we're getting close tothe end of the show, and I was
wondering if you can summarizethe key three takeaways for our
audience today, all aboutcitizen development.
Ian Barkin (23:42):
Yeah.
Again, I think one of the keytakeaways is.
This sort of ingenuity, thisgrassroots innovation is
happening and you want it to behappening in every corner of
your business.
So then it's just up to you todetermine how do you enable and
shepherd it so it does ithappens safely.
It is a call to arms for IT toto explore how it can better
(24:09):
collaborate with the businessusers because they really do
have great ideas and they areconstantly creatively trying to
problem solve and build, but itmakes a lot more sense for you
to all work together.
And I guess it's It's just astatement on the future, which
is, as large language models andlarge action models and
(24:33):
agentics, whatever we're callingit this week expand and their
capabilities grow, this is acall to arms, as far, a call to
action for constant andpersistent education.
Because it really is importantthat everyone in the
organization know what thesetools are capable of how they
(24:54):
enable them and how theysupercharge them.
This is, I would argue, thisshould never be a discussion of,
can you replace a human with arobot?
This is more about, there's somuch you don't get to that you
can.
If you're able to tap into thesecapabilities and I guess my,
I'll add a fourth because darnit.
(25:16):
Why not?
The point, the purpose of allthis isn't more applications,
the purpose of this isn't moreglue and integration between
systems.
The purpose of this is great,meaningful, valuable outcomes,
and keep an eye on that, Becauseultimately, that's the point of
(25:38):
all of this, is to use the besttools available with the best
thinking available to create thebest outcomes, which create the
best experiences that willenable the growth and success of
the best businesses.
Andreas Welsch (25:51):
I love that.
It all comes back to peopleempowering them, giving them the
tools to their work and domeaningful work, not having to
others to have time in theirbacklog to, to do this.
And I think it's a superimportant and valuable message
at this time, because I also seethat we will, like you said,
hear a lot more about agents andreplacements and being able to
(26:13):
do things that we haven't beenable to do before in all of
these great and scary ways.
So giving people the tools to,help themselves, I think is an
excellent call.
I'm super excited that you'vehad the, or that you've taken
the time to, to spend it with ustoday and talk more about.
Ian Barkin (26:33):
My pleasure.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, my pleasure.
Anytime.
I'll come on weekly if you'llhave me, this is fun.
Yep.
If anybody is listening andwants to learn about agents,
Andreas's courses on LinkedInlearning are bar none.
You got to check them outbecause honestly, back to that
raising a digital quotient andunderstanding what is actually
part of this new vocabulary ofthe future of work.
(26:56):
His courses are invaluable.
Assign it to everybody in yourcompany.
You won't regret it.
Andreas Welsch (27:01):
Thank you.
And likewise about intelligentautomation and yours, you've
been doing this for a couple ofyears.
Good amount of time too.
Wonderful folks.
If you're still with us rightnow, join us next week for
another episode of What's theBUZZ.
We'll have Nico Bitzer, CEO ofBots and People, on and we'll
talk about how you can upscaleyour workforce and raise their
AI literacy.
Today, we'll talk about scaling your AI
programs via citizendevelopment.
And who better to talk about itthan someone who's actually
written a new book about justthat.
Ian Barkin.
Hey Ian, thank you so much forjoining.
Ian Barkin (00:11):
Andreas, thanks for having me.
Awesome new intro, by the way.
That was very cool.
Thanks for letting me be part ofthat whole thing.
And in a thrill to be here.
I love the show.
I love the work you've done overthe last few years in educating
our community.
You are clearly an expertyourself and it's fun to be
here.
Happy 2025.
Andreas Welsch (00:28):
Happy 2025.
I couldn't be more excited tohave you on the show.
And we've talked about this fora couple of months actually
getting this lined up.
For those of you who don't knowyou in the audience, maybe you
can tell everybody a little bitabout yourself, who you are and
what you do.
Ian Barkin (00:42):
Yeah, my pleasure.
I am a combination of things.
I'm a BPO and an RPA guy.
And so what that meant was thebeginning of my career, I was
helping enterprises tap intoglobal talent, finding really
good, highly skilled people allover the world.
And about 12 years ago, that wasluckily the place where we
(01:02):
started to play with automationto augment and emulate some of
the work that those people weredoing.
And so that sent me on a mysecond sort of career journey,
which was around automation andhow do you digitize tasks in
enterprises, front, middle, andback office?
It resulted in launching an RPAconsultancy about 11 years ago.
(01:23):
Awesome journey, so much fun,built a great family, had a team
all over the world, worked withamazing clients and learned a
ton.
And and did that for a fewyears, sold it.
And since then have beenfollowing random passions.
I invest in AI startups and helpadvise them, hopefully with some
(01:44):
skills that I've picked up alongthe way.
I educate just as you do.
I've got LinkedIn Learningcourses, just as you do.
I've written some books just asyou have, and I just love being
part of this community.
Hopefully sharing usefulinformation for folks who were
starting their journey, who areexpanding their journey and
looking how to tap into what hasbeen an amazing set of
(02:07):
capabilities.
That's just so much more thanthose few tools we started
playing with 11, 12 years ago.
It's a, it is a robust andsometimes very confusing toolkit
we have available to us today.
Andreas Welsch (02:19):
Hey I must tell you, you've been a great
inspiration for me.
So with all the"just as you do",you actually went first and
you've inspired me to followthat path.
Ian Barkin (02:28):
I appreciate that.
Andreas Welsch (02:29):
LinkedIn Learning courses, the Creator
Accelerator Program, and justseeing what you do for the
community and how you share yourknowledge as well.
It's fun stuff.
Ian Barkin (02:37):
It is fun stuff.
And it's and there are skillsthat you collected through your
professional career that are soinvaluable and that you take the
time yourself to share them in away that's not just creating and
influencing for sake of being acreator or influencer, but
because you actually know it,you actually understand it,
resonates in everything you do.
And I'm thrilled if I could havebeen even the smallest of
(02:59):
inspirations to you on thatjourney.
Andreas Welsch (03:01):
Absolutely, yeah.
Now you've been on the showbefore, together with a few
other guests, but this time, Igot a surprise for you.
The same surprise that I got foreverybody.
Okay.
And so the little icebreaker,when I hit this buzzer over here
you'll see a sentence and I'dlike you to answer with the
first thing that comes to mindand why, and to make it a little
(03:23):
more interesting, you have 60seconds for your answer.
Probably, you've seen this bynow.
Ian Barkin (03:27):
Because it's a speed round for slow people.
Andreas Welsch (03:30):
Are you ready for What's the BUZZ?
Ian Barkin (03:32):
I am.
Let's do this.
Andreas Welsch (03:34):
Okay let's do this.
If AI were a sports car, whatwould it be?
60 seconds on the clock.
Ian Barkin (03:44):
The Tesla Coupe.
The small little sporty one thathas yet to come back out again,
but it would be that.
Andreas Welsch (03:49):
And why?
Ian Barkin (03:51):
Cause it's wicked fast.
It is a lot of promise doesn'tnecessarily exist, yet.
But a lot of the mechanics andthe elements of it do exist.
And now we're just we're waitingto see it.
That sounds very negative aboutAI, but it is here in pieces and
parts.
Andreas Welsch (04:06):
Wonderful.
Sounds a little bit like a Teslaadvertisement.
Ian Barkin (04:09):
Yeah, exactly.
I do drive one, although I'mlooking at various other things
now.
There's some cool new vehiclesout there.
Andreas Welsch (04:16):
A little eco friendliness in the AI space
would go a long way too.
Ian Barkin (04:21):
That's true.
That's an interesting point.
Yes.
The Tesla doesn't consume allthe energy that LLMs do.
Andreas Welsch (04:26):
Not the one of an entire power plant.
Ian Barkin (04:29):
That's right.
Okay.
How did I do that was is thatthe only one because that was
faster than 60 seconds now wegot a vamp and fill time.
Andreas Welsch (04:37):
So definitely 60 seconds is over and it was a
wonderful answer.
We're obviously not just here totalk about random questions and
coming up with answers.
This topic of citizendevelopment is actually near and
dear to my heart because I'vespent a lot of time in IT and
even 10, 15 years back, gettingthe technology and what it can
(04:57):
do, as I mentioned in yourintro, there's just been so much
tech being layered on top ofeach other from RPA to machine
learning, generative AI, yes,there are all these
possibilities.
And, about two years ago, wewere saying you don't have to be
an AI expert to work in AI.
That's what your background isplus AI, and I think that's
(05:19):
still true, but if I look at myfeed, it seems that's truer than
ever with everybody all of asudden jumping on the bandwagon.
But I'm curious, how are youseeing this play out in
business, this whole topic ofcitizen development and what
should people know about thisgoing into it?
Ian Barkin (05:36):
Yeah so the reason I embarked on the research that
went into the book with mycoauthor, Tom Davenport, who is
a legend in many spaces and haswritten 25 books.
And so that was just a joy to beable to do that project with
him.
But the reason we embarked on itis because, as we said, 11, 12
years ago, there was thisconcept of automation that could
(05:58):
emulate the work that people wasdoing.
And so we embarked on that.
We took a look at it.
It was working.
But it still required somerigor.
It wasn't easy for a businessanalyst couldn't do it.
And yet the narrative in thespace was often, it's so easy, a
business analyst can do it.
And there was a lot of narrativearound just having everyone have
(06:20):
their own robot.
And that was, from a marketingand a sales perspective, totally
get it.
Understood why that was thenarrative, but from an execution
perspective, it was harder thanthat.
But then progressively overtime, and you mentioned there
were layers of higher complexitywith intelligent document
processing and machine learningand some other things, and
process mining and discovery,etc.
(06:41):
There became, there was still acommitment to that narrative of
making it easy enough that abroader audience and a broader
user base can actuallycapitalize on this set of
capabilities.
And so what happened is westarted to use, or vendors
started to use these terms lowcode and no code.
And I thought that was funnybecause ultimately it's weird to
(07:03):
name a software trend after thecomplexity of the tool.
I joke it's like calling a astick shift car harder to drive
and a manual car easy drive.
And like you can buy a harderdrive or an easier drive car,
what do you want?
And so lower code or no codereally was a way that we were
(07:25):
classifying technology thatrequired less coding, there's
more visual, more building withpuzzle pieces, drag and drop,
etc.
Unfortunately, even then, itstill wasn't so easy that a
business analyst could do it.
But, in the course of ourresearch, and actually, after we
went to press, this stuff isgetting easier and easier.
(07:47):
I'm ultimately prompting, whichis the ultimate in no coding,
where you're just using humanlanguage to articulate what it
is that you have dreamed up,that you'd to see turned into
something.
Sometimes it's an email,sometimes it's a poem, but
sometimes it's code andapplications and et cetera.
That is happening now at a ratethat we've never seen before.
(08:10):
And so this low and no code,whether we use those terms or
not are truly becoming possible.
And so what that meant wasdomain experts, the people who
understand the scope of the workthat they do.
If you're an HR and youunderstand employee onboarding,
if you're in finance andaccounting, and you are an
(08:31):
expert in accounts payable orreceivable or whatever else,
those domain experts now more sothan ever before in the history
of work and the history of workwith technology can turn those
domain expertise, those skillsthat they have and the needs
that they know that they have toget their job done more
efficiently.
They can start turning thoseinto applications, integrations,
(08:54):
and data models.
And so that's what I think is soexciting about citizen
development is there have alwaysbeen citizens developing for
them has been hard.
It's getting easier and easier.
And there's two reasons whythat's exciting.
One, because digitaltransformation requires a huge
number of people to contribute,and there just aren't enough IT
professionals to do that.
(09:14):
And two, IT and business havealways been an oil water dynamic
that don't understand eachother, don't really work well
together.
Not to say we don't, but if youhave the actual end user more
intimately involved in designingand executing that which they
dream up and need, man, this isa renaissance of digitization
(09:35):
across every enterprise of allsizes in every department, every
nook and cranny.
Citizen development for the win.
That was not a short synopsis,but I'm clearly passionate about
this stuff.
Andreas Welsch (09:49):
That's wonderful.
I read a post by Shail Khiyaraif you're leading an AI CoE,
some kind of an innovation CoEbecoming to bottleneck again as
well, and I was so reminded ofIT, because when I talk to IT
decision makers, they tell me,yeah, there are all these things
that we need to do and we havebacklog of things.
And even in my corporate careerin IT, you said, yeah you can
(10:10):
come back next year, maybe insix months, because we're really
busy with other things.
So I do see that promise.
And I do see that value ofcitizen development with certain
guardrails, certainly empoweringyour business, empowering your
users to do the things that areimportant.
Easy enough, scalable enough,yet less your security and your
(10:33):
integrity of the business.
Ian Barkin (10:34):
Totally agree.
By the way, it was that ITroadmap, right?
Necessities, mother ofinvention.
It was bottleneck was the motherof invention in the RPA days.
IT just could not get toprojects that business users
found useful and valuable.
And so they found a, an outlet,they found a way to work around
(10:55):
IT.
And that was RPA initially, andit's only getting easier.
It's only getting more powerful.
We assert in the book strongly aneed for governance, to your
point, and B, a need forcollaboration because otherwise
this becomes the grey IT roguedigital initiatives shadow that
you do not want in anyenterprise ever.
Andreas Welsch (11:20):
And by the way, it's great to see so many folks
joining.
Ramnath and Douglas and Stephen.
And Martin.
So thank you for being with us.
If you have any questions,please put them in the chat as
well.
And we'll pick them up in acouple of minutes.
I do want to make sure that thiscontinues to be an interactive
show.
That's why we are live.
So please keep your questions.
And easy.
All of that, and it's.
(11:42):
It's Tuesday, just afternoon inthe U.
S., so keep them easy, keep themlight.
But yeah, as we're alreadysaying that there's so much tech
in a business layered onuntapped potential.
So why do we talk about citizendevelopment?
Why do we need to say, inaddition to bottlenecks, what
are things that domain expertsin their respective business
(12:03):
functions can all of a suddendo, or what do they need to do?
Ian Barkin (12:07):
Yeah.
So I think there are tiers andlevels that, there's that which
is possible and that's, which isreasonable.
And again, in the book we mighttouch on this later, but we've
got several different frameworksand structures that we major on
both because we saw it happeningwithin the enterprises we
interviewed.
And also we knew it shouldhappen in any enterprise that
(12:28):
wants to embark on this.
But back to the fundamentalpoint, there's more work than
there are IT professionals to todo that work.
There is a greater level ofexpectation and marketing around
the potential for, let's call itAI.
And a lot under that umbrella,but a lot of people are hearing
(12:48):
a lot of things about it,especially in this era of AI
agents, where it seems like thatis just, All of the news, all of
the story, all of the update,all of the product release.
And every single majorenterprise now has agent as the
concept that they're organizingaround.
The lens through which we lookat the work that we do.
(13:09):
is heavily AI ified andagentified and we want to see it
used.
And so that automaticallycreates a massive supply demand
gap.
And there are, which I think isa good thing in so much as, In
the old days, you'd do sort ofcontinuous improvement exercises
(13:29):
and Kaizen and Lean exerciseswhere you'd study Pareto's and
whatever, I'm showing sort of mybackground, but you would
identify areas of opportunity.
This sort of is a shot in thearm for that initiative.
Everybody almost can't help butlook at their work through a
lens of what can automation dofor me.
(13:53):
Which is really exciting.
And the other thing that wefound in the book and in the
interviews that we had was thelevel of digital quotient, just
the shared vocabulary is suchnow that a business person and
an IT person that findthemselves in a collaboration
session or in a meeting room ofany sort are often.
Much closer together than theyever have been.
(14:16):
They're speaking similarlanguages.
They understand constraints.
They're discussing the art ofthe possible.
They know what the existingenterprise architecture enables
or constraints, and I thinkthat's been a huge asset just to
evolve that discussion to apoint where we can be
brainstorming what is possiblenow, it still comes back to, do
you have the capabilities?
(14:37):
Do you have the guardrails andgovernance internally?
And do you have the right toolsto enable that?
And that's up to an enterpriseand often leadership and IT to
decide on how to approach that.
Andreas Welsch (14:52):
Are you seeing that business is getting more
tech savvy and literate or IT isgetting more business?
What did you find in it?
Ian Barkin (15:01):
It's a great question.
I think it's more the formerthan the latter.
I believe that business isbecoming more tech savvy just
because of, and this is not thelast few weeks.
This is the last decade thatthey're becoming more tech
savvy.
But I also think it's it is.
As a necessity, it is requiringthat IT become more business
savvy because they are havingthose discussions with business
(15:23):
users.
And they're, they are, IT's roleis to support an enterprise,
right?
Every company is now a softwarecompany, but the company first
and foremost is a productcompany or a service company.
They have customers, they havestrategy, and supercharge that.
And we argue in the book that IThas to find a way to do two
(15:45):
things which is never easy, butone of them is the traditional
enterprise IT role.
Of making sure all of thetraditional systems, the ERP
systems and CRM systems, and nowmore and more the security and
compliance and regulatorycomponents of an enterprise are
sound and stable and safe.
(16:07):
They also have to build in thissort of guidance element, which
is one of the frameworks wetouch on which is around
educating and nurturing andshepherding a lot of efforts
that will happen whether theywant them to or not.
You don't have a choice, it'shappening, you do have a choice
about how you respond to it andhow you enable it.
You're never stopping it, Iwould argue.
(16:30):
You can try, but good luck.
Andreas Welsch (16:31):
That's a big realization for technology
driven departments.
It's happening and you get todecide, how much you will be
involved and how much controlyou can still exercise.
If at all, right?
It's all about guardrails not somuch the stopping.
Ian Barkin (16:47):
The framework in the book is a 4G framework and the
G's, the traditional G'severyone talks about and
constantly brings up aregovernance and guardrails.
And we added two more.
One of them was guidance is thatconcept of it being and not just
IT, but other elements of theorganization, educating,
supporting, sponsoring,coaching, et cetera.
(17:09):
But the first G, so we added afirst G, which is Genesis.
And the purpose of that was,Genesis is the beginning of
something.
And the purpose of that G wasultimately to explore that
concept that if you think You'respearheading this initiative in
your organization.
Quite frankly, you're wrong.
It is already there.
(17:30):
It is already started.
So you are not starting this.
The genesis of the theinnovation and the pension to
DIY or to make or to build or toiterate has always been in your
best people.
And they did it with Excelmacros beforehand.
They have more powerful versionsof tools to do that in today.
(17:54):
And so you just have torecognize that is happening
everywhere in your organization.
Hopefully, genuinely, hopefullyyou've got people who are.
Who are those creators andbuilders and makers who who
think big thoughts and solve bigproblems and try to make their
operations more efficient.
Now it's up to you to decide howyou enable them.
Andreas Welsch (18:13):
So I'm curious, building on this and what you
said earlier around exercisingsome kind of control or
guardrails coming back to your4Gs.
And I see doug is in theaudience today, Doug Shannon,
and he said, Hey, how do you seethe potential rise of shadow AI
code coming into play and how dowe verify that the code is safe,
is sound is well written to methat kind of goes into the
(18:35):
direction of how can you havesome some control over this
citizen development and how doyou make sure that what citizen
developers build is safe?
Ian Barkin (18:44):
So there's a lot of questions in there.
Yes, so ultimately a simpleanswer is you need to have some
form of platform, right?
You need to have some set oftools that are vetted and
approved by the enterprise thatyour citizens can work in.
Because the last thing you wantis, bring it from home.
(19:05):
Just chaos where everybody findstheir ends.
And by the way, in the old days,there were, there was a small
number of tools that they mightbe able to sneak into the
enterprise and start playingwith now.
It seems like that list isinfinite.
So this gets harder.
But you need to enable them withthe tools and that they, the
sort of the building.
Set that they can use and yousaw that you see that to some
(19:28):
degree with things like copilotin the Microsoft platform that
most enterprises have.
There are others that they mayhave already had in house.
And so some of the RPA platformsare well positioned.
And if you've got UiPath wall toceiling then that's a place
where you start to do thebrainstorming and look for ways
to to digitize more broadly.
So those are the sorts ofplatforms you need to lean on
(19:51):
because you don't want to enablejust a pure bring your own
device or bring your own.
Automation sort of mentality.
And then to the point of how doyou prevent shadow?
Again, it's around thoseguardrails of you can't build
anything.
And in the book we discussactually levels of remit.
(20:12):
So there's those things thatmatter to me to oversimplify it.
And then there's those thingsthat touch or matter to we.
And so if it's a me thing, it isan application that helps me do
my job.
It's probably on my desktop oris very localized.
Anything that starts to branchinto the we, which could be any
sort of crossing the.
(20:33):
boundaries into a differentdepartment or a client or a
vendor or a partner orsomething, those start to become
ones you want to govern morestrongly and keep an eye on and,
or bring in IT to support.
Cause I might have a great idea.
Like I am in accounts payableand I have just a really strong
(20:54):
idea for how to make it betterfor everyone.
But if it starts to get complex,I'm not the person to be
developing that.
So you bring in it to shepherdand to collaborate and to
support those sorts of effortsor to take them over all
together and to build thembecause it's a good idea.
And then the maintenance thingtoo.
The last thing you want is tohave necessarily citizens
(21:16):
maintaining their own and then,and some enterprises do go that
way where you have to make surethat you're updating it every
once in a while, or they killit, you have to maintain it or
it goes away.
But in the same old sort oflogic of in the old days, in
like a mainframe, Bob wouldbuild a great tool, but.
You kept Bob away from busroutes because you didn't want
(21:36):
to lose him because he's theonly one who knew how it works.
You've got a, obviously a planfor that sort of situation as
well.
So in general, robust, maturecitizen programs do involve IT
for the governance the guardrailing the remit elements, and
then ongoing maintenance andsupport.
Andreas Welsch (21:57):
And I think it also partly answers Ramnath's
question, who was asking, howfar, to what extent should you
let citizen developers buildtheir things?
What if it gets too broad, toomany users?
I think you, you nicely answeredthat there is some, some some
good measurements that you needto say, this is what I let them,
because it's me.
(22:17):
This is what maybe wecollaborate on together.
Ian Barkin (22:20):
Let's be clear.
At no point in time are wesuggesting that a citizen should
replace SAP for you, right?
We are not suggesting thatcitizens step in and retool your
ERP systems and rewire how theenterprise is working.
But there are, there's nearlyendless list of opportunities.
(22:44):
To transform and digitize andevolve every process within an
enterprise that domain expertsare closer to than it ever will
be, and they can make efforts toimprove them.
And if it gets bigger than thosevery discreet solutions, then
think, how lucky are we thatwe're able to have meaningful
(23:05):
brainstorms with the end userand then be able to put it on a
roadmap.
Collaborate with them, figureout what really great looks
like.
Not only does it solve bigproblems, it also keeps your
best people.
And those are two wins in mybook.
Andreas Welsch (23:20):
Awesome.
Speaking of book, what's thebook again where people can read
all about this?
Ian Barkin (23:25):
Oh, that's man, you just asked me to plug my own.
Andreas Welsch (23:29):
This guy.
Ian Barkin (23:30):
All Hands on Tech.
The AI Powered CitizenRevolution.
Andreas Welsch (23:33):
Awesome.
So definitely check that out,folks.
Now, Ian, we're getting close tothe end of the show, and I was
wondering if you can summarizethe key three takeaways for our
audience today, all aboutcitizen development.
Ian Barkin (23:42):
Yeah.
Again, I think one of the keytakeaways is.
This sort of ingenuity, thisgrassroots innovation is
happening and you want it to behappening in every corner of
your business.
So then it's just up to you todetermine how do you enable and
shepherd it so it does ithappens safely.
It is a call to arms for IT toto explore how it can better
(24:09):
collaborate with the businessusers because they really do
have great ideas and they areconstantly creatively trying to
problem solve and build, but itmakes a lot more sense for you
to all work together.
And I guess it's It's just astatement on the future, which
is, as large language models andlarge action models and
(24:33):
agentics, whatever we're callingit this week expand and their
capabilities grow, this is acall to arms, as far, a call to
action for constant andpersistent education.
Because it really is importantthat everyone in the
organization know what thesetools are capable of how they
(24:54):
enable them and how theysupercharge them.
This is, I would argue, thisshould never be a discussion of,
can you replace a human with arobot?
This is more about, there's somuch you don't get to that you
can.
If you're able to tap into thesecapabilities and I guess my,
I'll add a fourth because darnit.
(25:16):
Why not?
The point, the purpose of allthis isn't more applications,
the purpose of this isn't moreglue and integration between
systems.
The purpose of this is great,meaningful, valuable outcomes,
and keep an eye on that, Becauseultimately, that's the point of
(25:38):
all of this, is to use the besttools available with the best
thinking available to create thebest outcomes, which create the
best experiences that willenable the growth and success of
the best businesses.
Andreas Welsch (25:51):
I love that.
It all comes back to peopleempowering them, giving them the
tools to their work and domeaningful work, not having to
others to have time in theirbacklog to, to do this.
And I think it's a superimportant and valuable message
at this time, because I also seethat we will, like you said,
hear a lot more about agents andreplacements and being able to
(26:13):
do things that we haven't beenable to do before in all of
these great and scary ways.
So giving people the tools to,help themselves, I think is an
excellent call.
I'm super excited that you'vehad the, or that you've taken
the time to, to spend it with ustoday and talk more about.
Ian Barkin (26:33):
My pleasure.
Yeah.
Yeah, no, my pleasure.
Anytime.
I'll come on weekly if you'llhave me, this is fun.
Yep.
If anybody is listening andwants to learn about agents,
Andreas's courses on LinkedInlearning are bar none.
You got to check them outbecause honestly, back to that
raising a digital quotient andunderstanding what is actually
part of this new vocabulary ofthe future of work.
(26:56):
His courses are invaluable.
Assign it to everybody in yourcompany.
You won't regret it.
Andreas Welsch (27:01):
Thank you.
And likewise about intelligentautomation and yours, you've
been doing this for a couple ofyears.
Good amount of time too.
Wonderful folks.
If you're still with us rightnow, join us next week for
another episode of What's theBUZZ.
We'll have Nico Bitzer, CEO ofBots and People, on and we'll
talk about how you can upscaleyour workforce and raise their
AI literacy.
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