Scenario for Earning Professional Development Units (PDU) To Maintain Your PMP Certification

The Project Management Professional (PMP) credential represents a significant gear change to your ability to conduct business in today's work environment. Depending on how you earn the Professional Development Units (PDU) required to renew your PMP, you can be facing relatively high costs. Class trainings tend to be relatively expensive, with typical tuition fees ranging between $250 and $500 per day, which represents a per PMP PDU cost of between $30 and $65.

Consider this scenario for earning PDU credits:

1- You begin by getting 15 PDUs for just working as a professional in Project Management over a 3-year period (or 5 PDUs per year). This is part of Category F.

2- Next, you can read a couple of project management articles in 3 hours, taking notes to be able to demonstrate that you thoroughly understood the content. This will give you 3 credits as part of Category C (self-directed learning).

3- Then do the same with a project management book or podcast to earn 2 PDUs. Again, don't forget to take some notes that you can show to PMI in case you get audited. This would also fall in Category C.

4- Webinar development can also provide you with some PDU credits, so take a few hours to develop and deliver a one-hour webinar about PMP Certification, Earned Value Management or any other topics of your interest and expertise within your organization. That would add 2 PDUs to your credit, as part of Category D (creating new PM knowledge).

5- If you are an experienced project manager, you can discuss with your management and serve as a mentor to a junior PM, and by investing 1 hour per month over a8-month period you can easily earn 8 PDUs. Again keeping records of your meeting with the junior PM would help you in case of audit.

With the above you already planned for 30 PDUs for your 3-year cycle! The key was to catch the opportunities, and to understand different categories of PDU as defined by the PMI.

6- As for the remaining 30 PDU credits, we strongly recommend that you take a couple of structured online training courses (totalling 30 hours) where you learn about a topic that you feel is missing in your knowledge portfolio as a project manager. These could be online courses in IT project management, finance, accounting, Six Sigma, or general management.

Earning Professional Develeopment Units, no matter how you receive them, will require some level of planning and research, but they can be integrated into your daily work if you plan them properly.

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