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Cornelius Fichtner

Today, we are shining a spotlight on Professional Development Units (PDUs).

More precisely, I’m going to give you a relatively short overview of the CCR Handbook, which defines all the policies around PDUs. And if you are a project manager who holds a certification from the Project Management Institute (PMI)® then you know about PDUs, because you need them for your certification renewal every three years.

And just to be absolutely clear: you need PDUs only after you have passed your exam. If you are still studying for your certification, then you need what PMI® calls Contact Hours.

So our focus right now is on the PDUs that you need after you pass your exam, and, because so many of you are Project Management Professional (PMP)® certificate holders, our examples will be primarily about PMP PDUs.

If you already have your PMP certification, then your goal is to earn 60 PDUs during each three-year period. Different certifications have different requirements, and the CCR Handbook explains exactly what you need for every credential.

I often hear from project managers that they are looking for free PMP PDU opportunities. Most project managers use a mix of free and paid PDUs to meet the CCR program requirements, and you'll find plenty of ways to earn both in the CCR Handbook.

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Episode Transcript

Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only.

Podcast Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: This episode is part of our PDU Spotlight and we take a look at the CCR Handbook.

Hello and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. This is Episode 431 and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you for joining us.

Podcast

Cornelius Fichtner: Today, we are shining a spotlight on Professional Development Units, that’s PDUs. More precisely, I’m going to give you a relatively short overview of the CCR Handbook, which defines all the policies around PDUs.

And if you are a project manager who holds a certification from The Project Management Institute, the PMI, then you know about PDUs because you need them for your certification renewal every three years.

And just to be absolutely clear, you need PDUs only after you have passed your exam. If you are still studying for your exam then you need what PMI calls contact hours. But our focus right now here is on the PDUs that you need after you passed your exam and because so many of you are Project Management Professionals (PMPs)® and you hold the PMP® certificate, my examples would be primarily about PMP® PDUs.

And we begin at the moment when you pass your exam because congratulations, you have just passed the Project Management Professional Exam and that was a major milestone in your career.

Once you are done celebrating your PMP success, you need to take a deep breath and figure out what you have to do in order to earn the required 60 Professional Development Units that are necessary to maintain and renew your certification in 36 months from now.

Believe me, those three years before you need to renew will pass faster than you think. However, you can’t just jump into earning PDUs without understanding the rules and policies that the Project Management Institute has in place.

Doing so would be like walking into a sports arena and starting to play American football without ever having read the rules of the game. You’ll make a lot of mistakes and probably walk away with a few broken bones. Well, no one wants to get injured from simply not understanding the rules of the game. And that is why we are going to take a look at PMI’s rules for PMP® PDUs, which are contained within the Continuing Certification Requirements Handbook.

This CCR Handbook covers all certifications offered by PMI that require a renewal. So when you read over the renewal requirements, it’s okay to skip over all those that are not for the certifications you hold.

Some important aspects covered in the handbook include Education PDUs versus Giving Back PDUs, the Talent Triangle® and minimum and maximum PDU requirements. Lastly and maybe most importantly, as a PMP credential holder, you also need to know how to earn those very critical PDUs.

So I have five quick topics for you, each only about one to two minutes long because today, I only want to give you the management summary. These five topics are first, PMP® PDU categories. Then second, we’ll look at Earning PDU credits. Third, we have claiming your PDUs. Then fourth, we have PMP® PDU courses and I’m going to close with a summary. So that’s going to be a summary of our summary here.

Alright, let’s get started with number one, that’s PMP® PDU categories and here there are two basic categories of PDUs. They are Education and Giving back to the profession.

Above are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Please subscribe to our Premium Podcast to receive a PDF transcript.