How to Find Free PDU in Technical, Leadership and Strategic Education for PMP / PMI-ACP?

PDU Requirements for PMP / PMI-ACP® Certifications

From 1st December 2015, PMP and PMI-ACP® Certification holders will need to categorise their education PDUs according to the PMI Talent Triangle with 3 key aspects:

• Technical Project Management: Knowledge, skills and behaviors related to specific domains of Project, Program and Portfolio Management
• Leadership: Knowledge, skills and behaviors specific to leadership-oriented, cross-cutting skills that help an organization achieve its business goals
• Strategic and Business Management: Knowledge of and expertise in the industry or organization that enhances performance and better delivers business outcomes

Click here for a highlight of the current PDU requirements for PMP / PMI-ACP® Certification holders (with infographic)

The minimum amount of PDU for PMP in each skill area is 8 PDU while that for PMI-ACP® is 4 PDU. The PDU requirements for your certification are clearly indicated in your PMI.org certification dashboard. You would see that I still need 0.5 Strategic & Business PDU in order to satisfy the minimum PDU in the PMI Talent Triangle skill areas.

PMI.org certification PDU requirement dashboard

Though there is no increase in the total amount of PDU to be collected for re-certification, it is now more difficult to gain PDUs in the correction PMI Talent Triangle areas from training organizations other than PMI/PMI Authorized Training Partner as the classification of the training activity PDU is solely determined by PMI (non-PMI Authorized Training Partner will not indicate the category of the PDU the activities belong to). The best way to gain the required classification of PDU is, for sure, through PMI.

Gaining Educational Technical, Leadership and Strategic PDUs for FREE

Is there a way to gain the Educational Technical, Leadership and Strategic PDUs for free?

Yes! For those who have just passed the exam to be certified, remember you have already paid the membership fee for the PMI? You can actually earn FREE PDUs with your membership. Note that the PDUs earned this way is Educational which has NO upper limits (i.e. you can earn all the 60 PDU/30 PDU for your PMP / PMI-ACP® re-certification through this).

PMI has provided lots of live and recorded webinars at www.projectmanagement.com. Valid PMI members (i.e. the membership has not expired) can log into projectmanagement.com directlyl with their PMI account name and password. The hundreds of recorded webinars (a.k.a. On-demand Webinars) can be find by hovering the cursor over the “Webinar” menu.

Hovering the cursor over the “Webinar” menu for recorded webinar

From there you will have a list of Filters on the left side of the page. These filters are meant to help you find suitable recorded webinars for getting PDUs for your certifications. You can select filters in the “PMI Certifications” (for a particular certification such as PMP or PMI-ACP®) or “PMI Talent Triangle” categories (for a particular PDU category: Technical, Leadership or Strategic).

Filters in “PMI Certifications” (for a particular certification such as PMP or PMI-ACP®)

Filters in “PMI Talent Triangle” categories (for a particular PDU category: Technical, Leadership or Strategic).

Since I need at least 0.5 PDU in Strategic area, I checked the “Strategic” checkbox (by the way there are 177 recorded webinars related to “Strategic” skills area as indicated, which is much much more than enough for each re-certification cycle). And I am presented with a list of webinars sorted by “date added” (which you can change the sorting criteria).

There is a red “PREMIUM” word indicated just below the webinar title. Don’t worry, that does not mean that you will have to pay for viewing the webinar. Your PMI Membership already includes the subscription to the PREMIUM contents on projectmanagement.com. Just click on the title and go to the recorded webinar page:

On the recorded webinar page, simply click on the video screen to being the webinar.

But don’t begin the webinar yet, get to know how many PDUs in Technical, Leadership and Strategic skill areas you will get by scrolling down the page. There you will have a full-list of PDUs for each PMI Certification in each skill area:

Full-list of PDUs for each PMI Certification in each skill area

The webinar I have selected can gain me 1 PDU for my PMP re-certification (0.5 PDU in Technical and 0.5 PDU in Strategic) and 0.5 PDU for my PMI-ACP® re-certification (0.5 PDU In Strategic).

Now, scroll up the page and click on the “Play” button on the video box and the webinar will begin immediately (of course you will need a reliable and speedy internet connection). Please note that you will need to allow the webinar to run from beginning all the way to end in order to get the PDU.

How to Report the PDU?

The best news is that the Education PDU earned through projectmanagement.com is reported automatically to PMI.org within a few days. I got the following email from PMI in less than 24 hours after watching the recorded webinar:

PDU claim acknowledge email from PMI

And the PDU claim was also instantly approved (since the webinars on projectmanagement.com has been pre-approved to satisfying the PDU requirements by PMI). In this way, I can gain FREE Educational PDUs for my PMI Certification.