How to earn Professional Development Units (PDUs) to maintain your Project Management Professional (PMP) certification.
- Josh Atkinson
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
Many individuals have questions about PDUs and there are tons of various programs out there, many that charge money, to help you. Even some that say they will do it for you. With a little effort and planning, earning the required PDUs to renew your certification will be easy to accomplish.
In this article we will discuss the following:
The Intent:
It's important first and foremost to understand the reason the Project Management Institute (PMI) and other reputable certification governing bodies require certified professionals to continue to invest in the maintenance of their certifications by earning PDUs. The goal is to ensure that individuals who claim to be certified are maintaining awareness and knowledge of best practices in the industry. PDUs are not meant to just be a “To Do.” They are there to keep you engaged and learning to maintain relevance as a professional. If you are a veteran, think of this like going to the rifle range every year. Sure you shot and passed once, but maybe the optics have changed, or your skills have atrophied a little over time and you need to refresh.
The Requirement:
PMI requires those who hold any PMI certifications to maintain and renew their certification every 3 years. Each certification has varying numbers of PDUs to maintain. These groups of PDUs are balanced across the 3 elements of the talent triangle (Ways of Working, Power Skills, and Business acumen) along with other areas beyond learning.
Timing:
PDUs can be earned at any time within the 3-year renewal period. PDUs don’t have to be spread out evenly over the 3 years and can even be earned in a single year. The key is that you obtain the minimum number of PDUs and have them approved in your PMI account/dashboard before you will be allowed to renew. Once approved, you can renew your certification. You do not have to wait until the end of your 3 year period to renew either. As soon as you have your PDUs, renew. This will add an additional 3 years onto your current period.
One nice thing is that if you earn more than the minimum number of PDUs, some of the PDUs earned in the final 12 months of your current 3-year certification may be carried forward. This can help spring board your progress towards renewal the next time. For PMP you can push forward up to 20 PDUs.
How this works: If you are working on your PMP renewal, have 80 PDUs, and 20 were earned in the final 12 months of your current 3 years of certification, then you can push 20 PDUs towards your next 60 PDU requirement.
The Cost:
Cost varies on the cert and whether or not you are a PMI Member. Being a PMI member does reduce the cost of renewal. If you are using various funding programs like Army CA, AF COOL, or USCG Cool, then the membership is not covered, and the full price of renewal can be covered. Ask your employer as well.
The Process:
PMI has divided PDUs into two main groups: Education and Giving back with 6 total subcategories as shown below.
Education is grouped according to the 3 sides of the PMI Talent Triangle.
Ways of Working
Power Skills
Business Aumen
Giving Back is binned into either:
Volunteering
Creating knowledge
Working as a professional
Ways to earn PDUs:
Beyond the PDU tracking structure, PMI further outlines a number of ways that PDUs can be obtained as shown in Figure 2 below.
Next we are going to dive further into defining the types of activities and opportunities outlined by each of the areas listed.
One of the fastest and easiest ways to earn PDUs is to pursue another certification. If you have your PMP and then earn your PMI-ACP, your 28 hours of class time and studying will help earn PDUS for your PMP. If you have both PMP and PMI-ACP, pursuing Lean Six Sigma Green belt would give you 35 PDUS for both and your study time would add PDUS as well. All of these certs can be funded for our military members using the GI BILL, or various credential programs.
When calculating number of PDUS do this : 1 hour of work, learning, or participation = 1 PDU.
Course or training:
This area is extremely broad and covers any course or training class you wish to attend to include self-paced learning, in person, or online learning. Course topics need to be linked to any area of project Management. For many, your organizations conduct annual courses on human resources, contracting, safety, stakeholder management, marketing, etc. Many if not all of these required annual courses would qualify as PDUs. Many college courses will count for PDUs as well as courses taken to pursue additional PMI certifications.
One often overlooked method to earn PDUs is actually to stack or ladder certifications.
As An example: if you have your PMP, then look into earning your PMI-ACP. The required hours of training along with time studying will count toward PMP PDUs. Since you already have your PMP you don’t require any experience so this is a great cert to get and help maintain your PMP. Once you have a second PMI Cert, all pdus carry over to PMI certs at the same time.
After you earn your ACP look into Lean Six Sigma. Every PDU would double-count for Agile and PMP.
You can also look into other PMI courses in AI or other topics or look at our PDU bundles.
Organization Meetings (limited to 1-2 PDUs per event)
These constitute any meeting, activity or event related to the Project Management Profession. They can be PMI chapter meetings, online networking sessions, PM-ProLearn events etc. Professional meetings are a great way to learn and network.
Online or Digital Media
This section applies to self paced learning online or through varied forms of digital media. The main way I have seen this applied is to the attendance or listening of webinars. PM-ProLearn routinely has webinars and there are a number of podcasts out there as well on many topics in project management. Tune into our PM-ProShow as well. If you are a PMI member then your free access to projectmanagement.com is a great resource to download and listen to webinars while driving in your car. The other benefit, is that these PDUs will auto upload into your dashboard.
Read
This is defined as self-directed reading that is relevant to the certification you hold. Any professional will tell you that reading is an essential component of learning. Project management is a huge field and there are a number of books, articles, white papers, and even blogs about leadership, business, management etc. that will qualify As you log your PDUs be sure not to overdo it. Maybe use a metric like 1 PDU per hour of reading. Check out our blogs and start earning PDUs.
Informal Learning:
Informal learning and teaching occur every day. Sometimes learning comes through interaction with others. You can earn PDUs by engaging in structured professional discussions with others, for example while you’re being mentored or participating in a “lunch and learn” session with your organization.
Work as a Practitioner (limited to 4 or 8 PDUs depending on your certification)
This is probably the easiest way to earn PDUs as we are all project managers. Simply enter the start date and end date for the project. The downside is that this is a limited number of PDUs.
PMP, PgMP, PfMP, PMI-PBA – no more than 8 PDUs claimed per cycle
PMI-ACP, PMI-RMP, PMI-SP – no more than 4 PDUs claimed per cycle
CAPM – no more than 2 PDUs claimed per cycle
Create Content
This is defined as Creating new knowledge resources for use by practitioners and the public at large. As the goal is to help others learn and grow in the field or project management, this is a tremendous opportunity to not only help others, but to earn PDUs. One great way to create content is to write articles. I have written a number of articles and published them on Linkedin, or on our PM-ProLearn blog. One hour worked equals 1 PDU.
Give a Presentation
Presentations are a common activity for many organizations, especially those in leadership. Giving a presentation about anything related to the field of project management will qualify. Some examples would be to speak at a PMI chapter event, online during a webinar, at a professional conference, or internally within your organization. Working to record a podcast may count as well. Be sure to include a link.
Share Knowledge
Sharing our skills with our team is a great way to grow and enhance the project management community. By sharing our skills we grow the profession and enhance best practices that are essential to our role as professionals. These activities can be through mentoring, teaching, helping others earn their PMP, etc. The goal is to simply help others learn and benefit from our knowledge, experience and perspective. You can also participate in discussion boards, online forums, etc. We welcome your participation on our linkedin page. You can even share an article with us that we might publish on our blog.
Volunteer
Volunteering is a great way to help other organizations and nonprofits. There are many active PMI groups or veteran organizations that need help. You can also volunteer for your organization to help get PMP classes scheduled and be a lead to grow the profession. Email training@pm-prolearn.com if you want to help.
How to pay for renewal
If you are currently serving in the military, various programs might be able to be used to cover the maintenance costs or if you are working for a company be sure to ask your HR department.
Army CA, AF COOL, USCG CA all cover the maintenance fees for certifications. Some may cover training fees for PDUS. If you want to get PDUs funded, the easiest way is to pursue a second certification.
If you have any questions about PDUS and what does or does not qualify, please reach out to our team.
You are not alone in this journey and we look forward to having you contribute and participate in our community.