Congratulations on your PMP certification!
PMP is undoubtedly the best Project Management certification out there and there are many reasons for it. One of those reasons is the Continuing Certification Requirements System (CCRS). Now once you are certified the clock starts ticking and you are required to earn atleast 60 PDUs in 3 years and report them to PMI through the CCRS.
PDU stands for Professional Development Unit which is basically a unit of measure that symbolizes your self improvement, giving back to the community and training in the field of Project Management. So as noted earlier, 60 PDU’s are required to be earned and reported to PMI in the duration of 3 years from the day you clear PMP. This cycle is repeated every 3 years and PDUs are required to keep your PMP certification valid and active.
CCRS is without a doubt one of the best features of PMP because this proves that PMP is not just yet another certification that you can achieve and then forget about. Efforts need to be put in by the certification holder to grow, evolve and learn more and also to give back to the field of Project Management.
Now the question arises, how do you earn PDUs? Can you earn them for free?
Ofcourse you can earn free PDUs. You can also pay and attend certain programs that offer PDUs. The best source of knowledge about PDUs is the CCR handbook linked here – http://www.pmi.org/-/media/pmi/documents/public/pdf/certifications/ccr-certification-requirements-handbook.pdf
One of the ways to earn PDUs is to attend certain free podcasts, webinars etc online. Typically, you can earn 1 PDU per hour when you attend these. Once you are done attending you can report the PDU to PMI via CCRS. You can refer to the video below for more information on how to do this.
