As I’ve been telling everyone in the other PMP videos that are part of this series, June 30th is when the PMP was supposed to change. But good news due to the current situation that all of us find ourselves in, PMI has decided to extend that change until December 31st. This means that if you are currently studying for the current PMP as it is, you don’t have to feel stressed having to take the test on June 30th. You have until December 31st, and I believe they’re actually going to start the new exam on January 2nd, 2021. This gives you even more time to study.
What happens when you are officially PMP certified and need to maintain your PMP? The way that you do that is you have to take a certain amount of professional development units (PDUs). PDUs are one-hour blocks of time that you can earn by learning, educating, and volunteering.
PDUs help you become a better manager, as well as mentor future managers. You are required to have 30 PDUs in the educational portion. This is broken down into three areas: Technical, Strategic, and Leadership. Within those areas, you have to get eight PDUs.
You can get an optional 25 PDUs. Eight of those are to be a practitioner, and then the other is for volunteering.
How do you earn these PDUs? So for the educational portion, which is the required 35 hours, you can do a bunch of courses and training. These can be in class, or you can do those online. If you remember in my previous videos, if you are a PMI member, you automatically get membership in projectmanagement.com, and that has a vast library of webinars as well as ones that you can register to attend. You know, while it’s happening and those are really great like I’ve learned so much in those webinars.
They talk about digital transformation, artificial intelligence, machine learning as well as things, like the type of soft skills project managers should have and the other stuff that you need to be a well-rounded manager. So that is a great way to earn PD use while you have time during the day or if you decide to do it on the weekend as well. But I usually do it during my lunch hour, and it’s great because they typically schedule it during your lunch hour. So those are great ways to earn PD use and learn and be able to maintain your PMP. You can also do this and other online learning platforms. There’s some classroom led courses that you can earn PDUs as well. B
Another great way is attending meetings, conferences, and seminars. Furthermore, you can earn PDUs by reading books and articles.
You can also earn PDUs by having lunch-and-learns and having different discussions.
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