Congratulations–you’ve earned your PMP® (Project Management Professional certification)! Now you must earn PDUs (Professional Development Units) in order to keep your PMP. One PDU represents about one hour of experience or activity. From the time you earned your PMP, you have three years to earn 60 PDUs. After earning PDUs, they must be reported to PMI (Project Management Institute) using their Continuing Certification Requirements System (www.pmi.org). If you earn more than 60 PDUs in your three-year certification cycle, you may transfer up to 20 PDUs to the next cycle that were earned in your third year. For more details, please see the PMP Handbook at: http://www.pmi.org/PDF/pdc_pmphandbook.pdf.
PDUs are organized into five categories:
Category 1: Formal Academic Education
These PDUs are earned by taking an academic course for degree credit relating to project or program management. One hour of degree credit is worth 15 PDUs.
Category 2: Professional Activities and Self-directed Learning
There are a number of ways to earn PDUs in this category. First of all, you can write an article on a project management topic. If you’re the author of an article published in a refereed journal, you may earn 30 PDUs. If the journal isn’t refereed, your article is worth 15 PDUs. If you’re a speaker or teacher at an event, you may earn 10 PDUs per activity. As a panel discussion member or a speaker at your local chapter meeting, you may earn 5 PDUs. For developing a new project management course, you may earn 10 PDUs. Although you can claim self-directed learning activities for PDUs, you’re limited to claiming 15 PDUs of this type per three-year cycle. For those of you who are working as project managers, you may claim 5 PDUs per year for practicing project management as long as you are working at least 1,500 hours per year.
Category 3: Courses offered by PMI Registered Education Providers/PMI Components
These PDUs are earned by taking courses through providers that are registered with PMI. We at TAPUniversity (www.tapuniversity.com) are a REP (Registered Education Provider) and our subscription courses fall into this category. We have a number of 100% online 4-week courses worth 14 PDUs as well as a subscription program that includes all the courses needed to keep your PMP certification.
Category 4: Courses offered by Other Education Providers
For every hour of learning about project management from education providers that are not registered with PMI nor formal academic institutions, 1 PDU may be claimed.
Category 5: Volunteer Service to Professional or Community Organizations
Getting involved and volunteering with your local project management chapter is a good way to earn these PDUs. You may claim a maximum of 20 of this type of PDUs in a three-year cycle. If you serve as an officer for 12 months for your project management chapter, you may earn 10 PDUs. If you’re on a committee for your chapter for 12 months, you may earn 5 PDUs.
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dkohrell
Thanks for sharing Laura.
I shared a bit on the LinkedIn Group – Project Manager Alliance today. Was reflecting on how the PDU gathering activities the last 10 years (since August of 2000) have really helped my development as a consultant, contractor, speaker and trainer.
While we offer an exceptional online training package (60 PDU’s for $375), training’s not the only way. I know we’ve all faced challenging times over the last year to two. So cash flow may be an issue. Our package – to the right now – is priced to help people learn and do so cost effectively (oh and gather those PDUs)!
Over 3 renewal cycles I’ve actually generated over 190 pdus from Cat 1, 2 or 5. A good majority of those have come from volunteering at PMI local chapter or SIG while the remainder have come from speaking at seminars, chapter meetings (not typically a paid gig) or delivering training (hopefully paid as long as the check doesn’t bounce
). I’ve been able to attend some fantastic training as a volunteer – sweating out the details of hosting an event or serving as MC for the benefit of meeting and learning from some our industry’s best. Not a bad return!
The net result has been over 10 years of a lot of beneficial learning and involvement. It’s also influenced how I’ve been able to shape my own training company – trying to infuse and embed the philosophy of involvement by each learner. Is it for everyone? No – some people just thoroughly enjoy cracking a book or learning in a lecture style. That’s fine! All in all I have become a much better senior level program/project manager by digging in, volunteering, meeting the best and learning all I can.
Comment by dkohrell — December 10, 2009 @ 10:12 am |