The apps, a few of the more than 700 that are available through Citrix's Podio App Market, can be customized by non-technical users for how a particular team works, using the Podio App Builder. The apps are also available through the Google Apps Marketplace.

'Easy as Creating a Spreadsheet'

With Podio, teams set up workspaces for management, communication and social collaboration. The platform is available for free for up to five employees.

In its announcement, the company described building Podio apps as "easy as creating a spreadsheet," which, it said, allows small businesses and individuals with little or no tech support to customize Podio project management apps or build their own. Podio apps are commonly used to streamline workflows, manage business processes or improve efficiency or productivity within a project.

ProjectAtWorks' Distributed Agile Teams provides support for teams using that development methodology. ProjectAtWorks, which is a community of users looking to create better managed projects, said that its app utilizes its own research report's recommendations on how best to work with teams using Agile methods.

Gantthead's Project Headway app is designed for PMI-standard project management, and is a step-by-step project management tool that allows users to drop in tasks, with advice from Gantthead subject matter experts along the way. Gantthead is a leading community for those interested in project and IT management, offering news, resources, tools, and personalized advice for its members.

Brad Egeland, a project management veteran and author of PM best practices, provides a Lessons Learned app, which helps project teams share their post-project learning for the benefit of the entire organization.

'Citizen Developers'

Citrix uses a term employed by industry research firm Gartner -- "citizen developers" -- to describe non-technical workers who create or assemble new business apps for themselves and their fellow workers. Gartner's research indicates that at least a quarter of new business apps by 2014 will be created by these citizen developers.

"A project management tool should fit the way people work," Citrix said in its announcement of the new PM apps, "instead of the other way around."

We asked Ryan Nichols, Podio's head of product marketing, if citizen-developed apps were a major consideration behind the development of Podio.

He replied that they "absolutely" were, adding that this capability "motivated us to grow Podio" so that users could "get things done" without being constrained by technological knowledge or the need to involve the IT department.

He pointed out that the Podio App Builders' drag-and-drop approach, which uses building blocks to create customized apps, allows users to create what they need, and to export data and reports from the app. Nichols noted that about half of 700 apps in the Podio Marketplace were created by Citrix, and about half by users.
 

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