This post applies to anyone who holds or is interested in the ‘Project Management Professional’ certification (PMP) from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

More specifically the Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) or Professional Development Units (PDU’s) which are needed to maintain the credential.

Below I describe how I extended my PMP certification for the full three years within six months of attaining the award (without spending a cent).

The PMI stipulate that in any three year cycle the individual has to undertake sixty hours of recognised development activity in order to have their certification renewed for an additional three years.

The first step is to navigate to the PMI archived webinar library (located at www.pmi.org/learning/on-demand_webinars).
Watch these webinars (during your lunch break or whenever you have an hour spare) and immediately afterwards record the activity in your PMI CCR record.
(Note: If the host provides you with an Activity number it is very important you record the training under Category A and use the supplied number – There is no limit on the amount of training you can record against recognised PMI training but there is a limit to the amount available on the web for free!)

Once you have recorded at least 30 hours of Category A training through the PMI webinars you can then use unofficial webinars for the rest of your requirements (if you so wish).

I chose to use the Free Project Management Podcasts provided by Cornelius Fichtner (www.project-management-podcast.com).  Cornelius has literally hundreds of hours of material on his website and covers every Project Management discipline and sector you can imagine.
These had to be recorded against Category C (Self-Directed Learning) but as you are allowed up to 30 PDU’s in this category that is not a problem.

These two sites alone will provide all of the PDU’s you need to renew your PMI credential for three years.

If you are actively working as a project manager you can also claim an additional 5 PDU’s per year for Category F (Working as a Professional in Project Management).  This will reduce your requirement by 15 PDU’s over the three year period.

There are also allowances for blog posts, volunteering, public speaking and many other activities but in order to keep this guide simple I have only used Categories A & C

(I should acknowledge that membership of the PMI itself is not free but I am making the not-unreasonable assumption that PMP holders are already members of the PMI).

I hope this helps you maintain your credential and please feel free to let me know if this helped you (or if it didn’t).

Regards,   John