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If you are a certified project manager, and - in particular - if you hold a certification from The Project Management Institute (PMI)® then you know that your certification has to be renewed every three years. The process is quite simple:

1. After you are certified you have to earn a specified number of professional development units (PDUs)
2. If you are a Project Management Professional (PMP)® the number is 60, and for a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® it's 30
3. You'll have to report your PDUs with PMI® and at the end of the three years you pay the renewal fee, which starts the next 3-year cycle for you to earn the next set of PDUs

But... where do you find those PDUs? And how do you find free PDUs?

Well... you have come to the right place because over the last decade, I have published 458 episodes here on The PM Podcast, and most of them qualify for free PMI PDUs.

So here is the recording of a recent live stream where I presented how to earn PDUs from this very podcast. As always, with lots of questions from the audience.

Earn Your PMP PDU Online:

Episode Transcript

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

Webinar Introduction

Cornelius Fichtner: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, I’ll show you how to earn 60 PDUs for doing what you’re doing right now, which is listening to my podcast, and it’s all free.

Hello and welcome back to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. This is Episode #458 and I’m Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you once again very much for being here.

If you are a certified project manager, and in particular, if you hold a certification from The Project Management Institute, the PMI, then you know that your certification needs to be renewed every three years. And the process is quite simple.

After you are certified, you have to earn a specific number of professional development units. If you are a Project Management Professional (PMP)®, the number is 60. If you are a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®, an Agile Certified Practitioner, then the number is 30. You’ll have to report these PDUs to PMI and at the end of the three-year cycle, you hit the renewal button, you pay your renewal fee, and then the next three-year cycle begins and you have to earn the next set of PDUs.

But where do you find those 60 PDUs, hopefully, for free? Well you’ve come to the right place because over the past decade, I have published 458 episodes here on this very podcast, and most of them qualify for PDUs. So what you are going to see right now is a recording of a live stream that I did a couple of weeks ago in which I talked about exactly that process. How do you earn professional development units, PDUs, from listening to this very podcast here? As always with lots of questions from the audience. Enjoy!

Transcript

Cornelius Fichtner: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, everyone wherever you may be in the world! And welcome to today’s live event.

How to earn 60 free PDUs with The Project Management Podcast™, that is our topic today. And I would like to especially welcome all those of you who are actually subscribers to The Project Management Podcast™, the www.pm-podcast.com

Oh, I’m just noticing, we have the wrong logo up here on the web. This should be the logo for The Project Management Podcast™ at the top right, and not for the PrepCast™. Ah well, you learn something new every time that you do one of these live streams.

Hello everybody! My name is Cornelius Fichtner. I am in Tucson, Arizona right now. I have been a PMP trainer since about 2007, 2008 or something like that. And before that, I started The Project Management Podcast™. That’s the logo that you see now there on the, wait, right-hand side there on the far right over in the corner, The PM Podcast™. That’s the logo should be at the top there.

As always at this point, we have Qasim Abbas who joins us. He seems to be joining every day, or every time that we have one of these. Hello, Qasim! And also hello to Saw! Looks like you’re joining us from Paris. No, from Myanmar. Well, welcome to both of you.

Alright! So, the topic today is how to earn 60 PDUs and let’s take a look at the learning objectives. So by the end of this 30, 45-minute presentation webinar here, you will be able to describe the basic policies of PMI® CCR Program. And you will also be able to describe how to earn 60 free PDUs from The Project Management Podcast™. What you will not be able to do is explain why the logo at the top right has suddenly changed and it is now The Project Management Podcast™. That is thanks to this smiling woman here. This is Shannon who is joining me here live on the feed as well, and she just realized that that needs to do.

Murli joins us from Qatar. Nice to have you here. Thank you so much. Okay, so, what is the agenda here today? In order to explain to you how to earn 60 PDUs from The Project Management Podcast™, you first have to understand the PMI® CCR Program, what that is and what it means. So we are going to take a basic look at that. We’ll also talk about the PMI Talent Triangle®. And then once you understand those basic points, then we can move on to how do you actually earn 60 free PDUs from The Podcast™. I have a process there for you, a four-step process and we’ll close everything out with a take-action slide so that you know exactly what you need to do next in order to earn your PDUs.

Okay! So let us get started with the overview of the PMI® CCR Program. Actually no, let’s not. Let me just first of all make a clear statement, okay? This webinar here today is for those who have already passed their exam, okay? So if you are currently studying for your PMP, PMI-ACP, CAPM, whatever it may be exam from PMI, then you need contact hours. So before your exam, you need contact hours. After your exam, you need PDUs, Professional Development Units because you want to recertify, right? So this presentation here today, the focus of this presentation here today is for after your exam.

And by the way, even though I’m going to be talking mostly towards PMPs, the same process also applies for you if you are a PMI-ACP or if you are a CAPM, okay? You can apply exactly the same steps and the same ideas to that certification in order to earn your 15, 37, oh wait, how many do you need for the PMI-ACP, I don’t remember. Not of the top of my head, okay. Good! So with that out of the way, again this is for those who have already passed their exam. If you are still preparing for your exam, then you need contact hours.

And Qasim, if you tell me that you have already 35 PDUs, then are you already certified? When people talk about 35 PDUs, usually that means they are referring to 35 contact hours before the exam. After the exam, it’s PDUs. So talking about 35 PDUs normally means, you are talking about contact hours before the exam.

Okay! So let us get started here. As I said, you need to first understand the basics for the Continuing Certification Requirements Program. After you are certified as a PMP, ACP, or CAPM, you need to recertify every three years.

And good morning to you as well, Emily. Hello to Roanoke. I will be presenting for your chapter at the beginning of December at some point. And Qasim confirms: Yes, those 35 contact hours was indeed training before the exam.

Okay, good! So! The basics of the CCR Program, this is all described in the CCR Handboo, and again our logo at the top right covers the “k.” So it’s the CCR Handbook It’s about 20 pages long and it explains the renewal policies and procedures that you have to follow, okay? Without understanding this, you don’t know that in three years, your certification will expire, okay? This is for all certifications so that’s PMI-ACP, PMP, CAPM, Program Management Professional (PgMP)®, PMI Risk Management Professional (PMI-RMP)®, Portfolio Management Professional (PfMP)®, what else? PMI-SP®, the Scheduling Professional, so all of these certifications and how they need to renew is explained in this handbook. It is a bit hidden on the PMI website. Not the easiest handbook to find which is why we have an easy to remember link for you. So if you want to download this handbook, just go to www.pm-podcast.com/ccrhb as in CCR Handbook. Okay, alright!

So Ville de Quebec, Yacouba Yanongo is joining us from the Ville de Quebec. Hello to I would assume Canada! Alright, okay! So once you have that handbook, you can go through it. Let’s see. I think I have it opened here. Let me just bring this up and bring it over for you. Yup, here it is! Oh, that’s page two. Let’s go all the way to the top. The Continuing Certification Requirements Handbook. The important thing here is what PMI really says on this page right here.

PMI’s Continuing Certification Program supports the ongoing educational and professional development of our certification holders so that they are always prepared to meet the demands of today’s complex business environment. That means that PMI wants you to continuously learn something new as a certification holder. They don’t want you to just pass the exam and then stay stagnant. They want you to continue learning and that’s what the CCR is all about here.Okay! So much to the CCR.

Next, we have to talk about the PMI Talent Triangle™. Because the PMI Talent Triangle™ describes the three areas, most important to your ongoing education. As every triangle as you would expect, it has three sides. There is technical project management. So PMI wants you to learn new things in Technical project management. PMI wants you to learn new things in Leadership, and PMI wants you to learn new things in Strategic and Business Management. These are the three areas, most important to your earning PDUs. Okay.

Question here from Qasim: “When the certification expires, are you no more considered as PMP certified?” Yes, Qasim. So if you forget to earn those 60 PDUs that we’re talking about today in the three years after your certification date, so today, you’ll get certified as a PMP. You’re a certified PMP now. But now you have to earn these PDUs but you forget, three years from now, PMI is going to send you a letter and say, you are no longer a PMP. You have, I think three months or is it one year, I think it’s one year to make up those 60 PDUs. So during that time, you lose your certification status, you’re no longer a PMP, but you can now earn those PDUs quickly and then they will make a PMP again. Okay.

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.