Citizen Developer for Robotics overview
A Citizen Developer is an individual who works outside of IT and uses Pega Robot Studio to configure workflows to automate simple to moderately complex business processes. A Citizen Developer might work either as a sole contributor – building simple automations for use by themselves and their immediate workgroup – or as a member of a team that includes Pega Robotic System Architects and other IT stakeholders, all building shareable automations as a service to their department.
Citizen Developers work with the wider fusion team to develop Application Assets. An Application Asset is a self-contained, reusable automation related to a particular application and tested independently from the project business logic. Creating Assets separates the application-related development from the rest of the project. It supports best practices and makes project governance easier by arranging testing levels and setting clear responsibilities at each development stage.
For example, a car rental company uses a webpage that contains customer data and vehicle fleets. The company implements an attended robot that helps the customer service representative to create a car insurance agreement. The development team prepares an Application Asset for the webpage which includes methods to search for a customer and get customer details.
A Citizen Developer is empowered not only to download and use Application Assets created by the organization but also to start the creation process for a new Application Assets. Application Assets created by a Citizen Developer can be passed along to the development team to be made more robust and shared with the rest of the organization.
Assets
Using Assets helps develop better design practices. For example, a less-experienced developer can create simple scenarios while a more experienced developer adds error handling and complex cases. These modular development methods help team reviews and iterative project development. Application Assets also help structure and simplify test scenarios, as the verification of the interface and behavior of an application occur separately before deployment.
When creating an Application Asset, even partial automation of a process should be considered a successful outcome. Citizen Developers might not have the required skillset to fully automate every aspect of their workflow, but even partial automation reduces the time to complete the task and reduces the chances of the user making an error.
Roles and responsibilities in Asset development
Assets in the iterative creation of robotic projects give different personas clear responsibilities in a development process. These personas, or roles, facilitate the best development practices, support agile planning, and ensure project quality.
The following figure illustrates how responsibilities among roles could be divided in the development of a robotic project. In this scenario, the Business subject matter expert (SME) acts as a Citizen Developer to begin the development process:
The Business SME analyzes the functionality and possible use cases for a new application in robotic projects. The SME translates the requirements into happy path automation. As a result, the SME creates the first automations and project documentation.
The SME passes the project to an experienced developer who extends the functionality by adding error handling and creating a test strategy for the application. The developer passes it to a center of excellence (COE) manager who assesses the quality of the Application Asset. The COE manager publishes the Asset to the Assets Catalog in Pega Robot Manager, where it can be downloaded for use in Robot Studio by others in the organization.
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