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Project Management Institute (PMI), the world’s leading association for the project management profession, today launched the industry’s first, platform-agnostic educational resources for organizations seeking to implement and scale Citizen Development (CD) practices. The first two products in a planned suite of offerings are available now:

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• The PMI Citizen Development Body of Knowledge (CDBOK™) is a centralized resource that will help individuals and enterprises understand best practices for implementing citizen development within an organization at scale.
• The foundational training course is an e-learning training program that provides an introduction to citizen development and outlines best practices in CD methodologies.

Citizen development platforms use intuitive “low-code” and “no-code” tools, so that even non-technical, non-specialist employees can create apps, software solutions and even enterprise-grade applications without having to learn to code. The emergence of citizen development promises to improve enterprise productivity by making application and software development significantly faster and less costly, while also accelerating value delivery and enabling organizations to achieve outcomes more quickly.

“PMI is ideally positioned to help drive adoption of citizen development,” says Sunil Prashara, PMI President and CEO. “As the world’s leading not-for-profit association for the project management profession, we’ve spent the past 50 years equipping our stakeholders with the most relevant skills and resources so they can deliver change and business value, all to help their organizations succeed. To ensure we are providing the right tools for citizen development, we have tapped leading experts in the field and combined their knowledge and expertise with our own deep experience developing global standards and certification training for project managers all around the world. With more than 600,000 members and 1.5 million gross credential holders in nearly every country, we can serve as an objective resource for organizations and individuals looking to apply citizen development tools and methodologies thoughtfully and with confidence.”

Citizen Development Helps Pave the Way for the Next Wave of Business Transformation

Citizen development should ease the burden on over-taxed IT departments straining to cope with growing demands for support from business units. Forrester Research estimates that by 2024 the U.S. will have a deficit of 500,000 software developers.

“Citizen development will form the next wave of business transformation,” says Mr. Prashara. “Technological advances such as AI are eliminating much of the complexity involved in software development, allowing non-specialists to create their own solutions and bring new products and services to market in unprecedented timeframes. This will democratize software development and turbocharge digital transformation efforts.”

Citizen development enables a “hyper-agile” way of working, which can lead to substantial reductions in cost and development times. With citizen development, the speed at which you can take an idea and design, build, test and deploy apps enables teams and organizations to deliver projects and bring products and services to market faster than ever before.

Scaling Citizen Development at the Enterprise Level, Safely and Securely with PMI

Gartner estimates that the number of active citizen developers will be four times that of professional developers by 2023. PMI’s new suite of products should help facilitate that transition, allowing organizations to promote citizen development among their employees in a measured and secure way.

According to Gartner, 41 percent of business leaders report having active citizen development initiatives underway, with 20 percent either evaluating or planning to start CD initiatives. However, to derive maximum benefit from citizen development, organizations will need to scale it across the enterprise, creating an organizational operating system. There is an urgent need to enable this level of scalability in order to drive transformation efforts, Mr. Prashara says, and that was the driving force behind developing the new PMI offerings.

“PMI recognizes the critical role that citizen development plays in empowering individuals and organizations,” Mr. Prashara says. “As organizations look to leverage citizen development in their digital transformation programs, there are many pitfalls to avoid, including the lack of a comprehensive methodology and framework and adequate training to allow citizen developers to succeed. PMI is addressing this gap by providing a vendor-agnostic framework to support professionals’ need to learn the basics and best practices, but also organizations’ need to unlock the potential of citizen development in compliance with IT governance and security. This will give IT the confidence to scale citizen development across the enterprise to accelerate the organization’s transformation efforts.”

PMI Citizen Developer Products & Experiences in the Pipeline

While the initial offerings are available now, PMI will launch additional PMI Citizen Developer products in the coming months, to include specific role-based courses and certifications, as well as a community portal for sharing CD information and thought leadership. The PMI Citizen Development Body of Knowledge (CDBOK™) will also be followed by an executive book on CD best practices, highlighting specific case studies and leadership perspectives.

To learn how to unlock the potential of citizen development at your organization, go to: pmi.org/citizen-developer .

About Project Management Institute (PMI)

Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading association for those who consider project, program or portfolio management their profession. Through global advocacy, collaboration, education and research, we work to prepare more than three million professionals around the world for The Project Economy: the coming economy in which work, and individuals, are organized around projects, products, programs and value streams. Now 50 years in the making, we work in nearly every country around the world to advance careers, improve organizational success and further mature the project management profession through globally-recognized standards, certifications, communities, resources, tools, academic research, publications, professional development courses and networking opportunities. As part of the PMI family, ProjectManagement.com® interactive website creates online global communities that deliver more resources, better tools, larger networks and broader perspectives. Visit us at www.PMI.org , www.projectmanagement.com , www.facebook.com/PMInstitute and on Twitter @PMInstitute.

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