Episode 183: Earn 60 Free PDUs (Free)

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This video explains how to earn 60 Free PDUs from The PM Podcast. All you have to do is subscribe, listen and claim!

This video is an update of the information previously published in episodes 150 and 183. The videos of those episodes have been removed.

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode of The PM Podcast is titled “Earn 60 Free PDUs” because we want to show you how to do exactly that simply by listening to The PM Podcast. Here's how in a nutshell:

• It’s very simple to earn these free PDUs.
• Just keep doing what you are doing right now:
• Listen to (or watch) The PM Podcast regularly
• Claim your PDUs from PMI.

Many of you may already be aware of this and also how it is done, but we keep getting emails from people asking about this and starting March 1, 2011 PMI has increased the number of PDUS that you can earn in this way from 15 to 30. That is why I created this video.

Note: This video is in essence an update to the old video in episode 150, explaining how this all works under PMI's new PDU category structure. To avoid confusion, we have removed the video of episode 150 and replaced it with this one.

Ultimately, Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential holders need to earn 60 PDUs for PMP renewal cycles. You can earn half of those for free using The PM Podcast resources, and the video above explains exactly how.

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 is The Project Management Podcast™. We bring project management to beginners and experts. Find us on the web at www.pm‑podcast.com or send your emails to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to this Episode [#183]. I am Cornelius Fichtner. This is The Project Management Podcast™, nice to have you with us.

This episode of The Project Management Podcast™ is titled “Earn 30 Free PDUs” and well obviously, in the next few minutes, I will show you how to do exactly that.

But before we start, let me just say that this video here is an update to what we said in Episode 150. In fact, what we are going to do is we’re going to remove the old video 150 and we are going to replace 150 with this video here. So if you’re watching 150, you’re still watching the correct one and if you’re watching 183, well, it’s the same video here.

The reason for this is that PMI changed. It’s PDU categories since we recorded the original video for Episode 150 and there’s a big change that they have implemented. In fact, previously, you were only able to earn 15 PDUs with the PDU Podcast and now new, you can earn a total of 30 PDUs, wasn’t that great?

Well then, how can you earn 30 free PDUs? Well, it’s really simple. You can simply do what you are already doing and that is listen to or watch The Project Management Podcast™ regularly and once you have listened to or watched around 30 hours of our programs, you can go ahead and you can claim 30 Category C PDUs from PMI. And this episode here, this video, gives you the details on how this is done.

Now, I know that many of you, you’re probably already aware of how this is done and how you need to do this and where you need to go, and how to claim them, but I keep getting emails from new viewers who are not quite sure how this is done, new PMPs so I want to make sure that with this video here, we’re going to show you exactly how it is done.

So let’s begin with the basics:

In 2005, I started The Project Management Podcast™ and since then, podcasts have emerged as a valuable for project management-related education. They are a simple way of delivering project management-based thought and education to the project management community at large. This is especially true for those practitioners among us who are geographically challenged, you know, you can’t drive to an in-person webinar or scheduling is just simply a roadblock. Podcasts, very easy, download them, listen, watch whenever you want to. So this is why it has been possible for you as a PMP since 2006 to claim 15 PDUs for listening to podcasts. And starting in March 2011, PMI changed this rule and it is now 30 PDUs that you can claim. You can claim them in Category C of the new PDU categories which is Self-Directed Learning.

For all the details here, please go to www.pmi.org, look on the Career Development in the handbooks and open up the PMP Credentials Handbook and look for PDUs. You’ll even notice that podcasts are mentioned in there.

One important factor, remember is this, every PMP is subject to an audit. The PMI reserves the right to reject some or all of the PDUs that you submit via their online system. That means that during the submission process that you may have to show to PMI what exactly did you do, how exactly did you earn those PDUs as you were listening to podcasts and we have an elegant solution for you here. We’ll get to that in a moment.

First, however, here are some basic rules in regards to those 30 PDUS:

First of all, you can only submit a maximum of 30 Category C PDUs for each 3‑year certification cycle. You will earn 1 PDU for 1 hour of listening or watching to project management-related podcasts and very important, the topics that you listen to or watch, they must relate to topics from the PMBOK® Guide Knowledge areas. If a podcast happens to be not 60 minutes in duration, then you would have to listen to several episodes or watch several videos on the same topic and simply add them up. For instance, if you have 2 podcasts, each of them is 30 minutes long and they’re both on risk management, then you can add them up together and you have earned 1 hour equals once again 1 Category C PDU.

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