Be a hero, be a Citizen Developer!

Developing apps at STRABAG? Anyone can do that. Take: An affinity for IT, an appetite for new things, good communication skills and sufficient motivation and commitment - and you've got yourself a Citizen Developer!

Advancing the team and supporting work processes through digitalisation projects and automation – in future, not only trained IT experts should be able to do this at STRABAG. At the end of 2021, the Executive Board of STRABAG SE therefore approved the “Citizen Developer” concept.

The aim of the project is to train so-called “Citizen Developers” for each subdivision during the course of the year, who will establish digital solutions such as apps or automated workflows for colleagues in their own area or team and thus innovative and productivity-increasing solutions in the Group.

“IT-savvy colleagues have always supported the processes of their teams with self-developed IT solutions – for example, Excel macros or MS Access solutions. The benefits are undisputed, but until now this has largely been “under the surface” and, as “shadow IT”, also harbored risks, for example regarding the protection of critical data, IT security or the lack of a substitute in the event of the “developers” being unavailable.
But we now want to use the potential that lies behind it! On the one hand, we can advance process digitalisation, and, on the other hand, we can counter the above-mentioned risks by supporting the citizen developers through defined organisational and technical framework conditions.”
Stefan Ebner
Head of Application Services and Data Science at SID

“I exchange ideas with other Citizen Developers and that’s how we always come up with good solutions.”

Florian Maulick

Pioneer and Citizen Developer at STRABAG (Technical Services, Process Planning & Construction Management at STRABAG)

No Code / Low Code App Development with the Power Platform

No code/low code platforms enable the simple and fast creation of software applications, workflows or automations. At STRABAG, the Power Platform is used for this purpose.

“The tools of the Power Platform offer ideal opportunities to develop functional and useful MVPs (minimum viable products), for example apps or workflows, in the shortest possible time – often after 1-2 days - using an agile approach.”

Dennis Cluesserath
Function Lead Application Development & Automation

On this platform, apps and flows can be created without programming (“no code”) or with a few simple program instructions and drag-and-drop (“low code”), which digitalizes processes for colleagues and makes them faster and less complicated. This means that employees without an IT background can also become Citizen Developers.

Hackathon 2022: The Citizen Developer community at STRABAG is growing

“During the planning phase for the Citizen Developer Project 2022, we developed a hackathon concept that on the one hand gave Power Platform newcomers a first insight into the role of a Citizen Developer, and on the other hand already served as a start to the development of a wide variety of apps,” says Dennis Clüsserath.

In May 2022, the Hackathon 2022 united employees from all over the world – including Power Platform newcomers and experienced Citizen Developers – with the motivation to learn new things, develop innovative apps for the Group and, last but not least, have fun together!

The app development was not the only success: colleagues from Chile, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Latvia, Oman, Qatar and Australia were able to get to know each other and network for the first time despite the great geographical distance and time difference. Another step for the Citizen Developer community, which digitally advances the Group!