citizen developers

Kicking off Season 3 of Mining Your Own Business, Evan Wimpey sits down to chat with Bill Shube. A supply chain analytics expert with over 11 years at the LEGO Group, Bill is also the founder of Supply Chain Watchtower. Through his company Bill’s goal is helping small businesses effectively manage their inventory.

Grab a chair and tune in as he shares his story. Bill talks about how his team has successfully leveraged citizen development to gain actionable insights from data, saving thousands of hours and much more. Plus he shares how citizen development can impact on data tasks, governance, and scalability within an organization. 

In this episode you will learn: 

⛛ How citizen development can be used to empower business teams to play a more active role in data analytics 

⛛ The need for governance initiatives to manage potential risk and ensure citizen developers stick to best practices

⛛ How no-code and low-code tools can complement existing systems, boosting collaboration rather than creating silos 

⛛ Why a mindset change is crucial for all teams to be empowered to make the most of data 

Quote
💬 “That's what citizen development is about; it's empowering the average user.”

Featured in This Episode

Bill Shube, Founder, Supply Chain Watchtower
Bill Shube, founder of Supply Chain Watchtower (SCW), has over 11 years of experience in supply chain management and analytics at The LEGO Group, where he and his team have saved thousands of hours and spotted millions of dollars worth of planning errors through analytics automation. 

His goal in founding SCW is to bring these big-business experiences and techniques to small and growing businesses, helping them understand their demand and supply. This empowers businesses to right-size inventories, avoid stock-outs and overages, and ultimately improve cash flow and profitability.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-shube/ 

Evan Wimpey, Director of Analytics Strategy, Elder Research
Company website: elderresearch.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/evan-wimpey

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:35 Talking about Bill’s experience with the LEGO Group and his company, Supply Chain Watchtower
01:48 Discussing Bill’s work in the supply chain
02:26 Sharing the team’s evolution to citizen developers
05:10 Talking about the challenges of siloed data
06:31 Breaking down what citizen development is and its benefits
08:52 Discussing how citizen development is implemented
12:28 Sharing the need for data governance
13:22 Talking about putting good practices in place
14:55 Discussing how user communities can foster collaboration
16:17 The importance of being on the same page
22:05 How citizen development can impact multiple areas of a business
25:06 Discussing how Bill’s team is using data tools to support daily operations
27:54 Talking about Bill’s dreams for the future
30:33 Wrapping up the show

Find more show notes, transcripts, & more episodes at:
https://www.elderresearch.com/resource/podcasts/

This podcast is produced in conjunction with OutSystems.

The big talk in enterprise software development circles is around low-code taking some of the hard work out of the development process. But there are solutions out there that are for both "citizen" and "traditional" developers. OutSystems has evolved that paradigm with high-performance low-code.

Our Tech Means Business podcast guest is Richard Davies, the Director of Digital Transformation for the APAC region. Richard is a stalwart of enterprise-scale software development and someone whose experience informs his role, advising and helping multinational companies craft production-ready apps in record time.

We talk about partnerships between development functions and other stakeholders and how high-performance low-code is the obvious evolution of Agile methodology, where producing an MVP (minimum viable product) takes a fraction of the time, thanks to (relatively) simple application development tools.

While “Harry from Accounts” may not yet be able to create an ERP in a week, those days may not be too far off. But for now, Richard throws down the gauntlet: attend one of OutSystems' one-day boot camps where you can "build an app in a day" or, try the platform for free in your own time. Put your battered O'Reilly volumes back on the shelf!

Try out OutSystems from here:
https://www.outsystems.com/Platform/Signup

Enterprise-grade app in a day? Go for it!
https://www.outsystems.com/training/classroom-training/developing-outsystems-web-applications-boot-camp/

Richard Davies is here on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/richdavies1/

Joe Green can be dragged and dropped here:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/josephedwardgreen/