Your Marketing Manager Just Became Your Biggest Threat*

The person sitting three desks away from you, the one who handles your email campaigns and social media strategy, is about to disrupt your entire industry.

You think this is hyperbole. You're wrong*.

While you've been debating AI governance frameworks and worrying about developer shortages, something fundamental has shifted in how software gets built. It is proposed that by 2026, citizen developers will outnumber professional developers by 4 to 1, and most of them don't even know they're developers yet. Your marketing manager is about to become one of them.

The Mathematical Breaking Point

The numbers tell a story that most IT leaders do not like to acknowledge. up to 70% of new applications will use low-code or no-code technologies by the end of 2025 like Zoho Creator. up from less than 25% in 2020.

This isn't gradual adoption. This is exponential and it will be driven by survival pressure.

When your directors propose a new customer engagement initiative, you have two choices. Wait for your IT department to add it to their backlog, or watch your marketing manager build a working prototype in two days using natural language commands and a PDF upload.

The talent crisis has reached what I have heard called a "mathematical impossibility." You literally cannot hire enough developers to maintain current systems, let alone build new capabilities. The shortage of skilled workers has become the top challenge for IT teams, forcing companies to choose between delivering business value or maintaining traditional models.

Most people will choose survival.

The Twenty Four Month Window

You have roughly 24-30 months before traditional IT delivery models become unsustainable in your industry*. The timeline follows a predictable pattern that's already in motion.

2025-2026 marks the first wave. Companies that can't deliver digital solutions fast enough lose key customers or market opportunities. The competitive gap isn't gradual, it's exponential.

2026-2027 brings the second wave, when talent shortages make traditional IT delivery mathematically impossible. When you can't hire enough developers to maintain current systems, citizen development becomes survival, not strategy.

2027 & beyond sees the final wave break when regulatory and compliance frameworks explicitly support citizen development, removing the last justification for resistance.

If you can get ahead of this curve you will not just gain a competitive advantage. You will create existential pressure on those that don't.*

Platform Control Replaces Code Control

The successful companies aren't eliminating governance, they're changing it. Instead of controlling every line of code, they're controlling the platforms, APIs, data access, and deployment pipelines. Think of it as providing citizen developers with a compliant-by-design tool kit rather than giving them unrestricted access to raw dev tools.

The new governance model operates through three layers. The data control plane becomes the single point of enforcement for all data access, regardless of who builds the application. The platform governance layer contains pre-configured compliance guardrails that you cannot bypass. The orchestration layer manages policy distribution and enforcement across all platforms automatically. When citizen developers can only access data through compliant APIs, can only deploy through compliant pipelines, and can only operate within compliant boundaries, the governance nightmare transforms into an advantage. Compliance becomes automatic rather than manual.

The Human Element Everyone Ignores

The technical frameworks are the easy part. The human element is where most will stumble. You're essentially asking people who've never thought about data security or compliance implications to suddenly become responsible for applications that could impact customer data. The size of the cultural transformation required is not to be underestimated.

To make it work we will need to create shared accountability*. The citizen developer owns the business logic and outcomes, but IT owns the platform integrity and compliance framework. It's like driving a car - you’re responsible for where you drive and how you drive, but the manufacturer is supposed to ensure that the safety systems work properly.

What is counterintuitive is that giving people this responsibility within proper guardrails, will likely make them more security-conscious, not less.*

Marketing managers become incredibly diligent about data handling once they understand they're accountable for the applications they build. The key is training and clear escalation paths.

This cultural transformation will takes 24 months as a minimum.* The companies that invest in this human element alongside the technical infrastructure are the ones seeing real competitive advantage.

What Nobody Sees Coming*

Fast-forward to 2027-2028, when this transformation is largely complete across most enterprises. The most surprising unintended consequence isn't what anyone is discussing today. The potential collapse of traditional software vendor business models and the emergence of hyper-localised application ecosystems. When every mid-sized company becomes essentially a software company, you'll see the rise of application micro-economies. Businesses won't just build apps for internal use - they'll accidentally create solutions that become valuable to their entire industry vertical.

When a logistics company builds a citizen-developed app to optimise delivery routes, and it works brilliantly, why wouldn't they package that as a service for other logistics companies? When a restaurant chain creates an inventory management app that perfectly handles their specific compliance requirements, other restaurants will want it. Traditional enterprise software vendors will face competition from the most unexpected places: their own customers. Industry-specific software solutions will emerge from domain experts rather than generic software companies trying to understand vertical markets.

The Talent Retention Crisis

Another blind spot I see is organisational. in a couple of years you'll have created a generation of "accidental technologists" - people whose primary job isn't technology but who've become incredibly sophisticated at building digital solutions. These people will start leaving to create their own companies, taking their citizen-developed solutions with them and the talent retention challenge will flip completely. Instead of competing for scarce developers, you'll be trying to retain your staff who've become too valuable because of their technical capabilities.

Your competitive advantage is at risk of walking out the door with a marketing manager who built your best customer engagement app.

The Counterintuitive Reality

The most surprising part? With digital transformation failure rates at 84%, the democratisation of app development will actually increase the demand for professional developers, not decrease it.

When everyone can build basic applications, the complexity and sophistication requirements for professional development work will skyrocket. You'll need developers for the platforms that enable citizen development, not just the applications themselves.

The question isn't whether this transformation will happen. The data shows it already is.

Will you lead this transformation with robust governance frameworks, or be forced to react to ungoverned proliferation.

Your marketing manager is waiting for your answer.

• This is my opinion :)