As many people may know, PMI has recently announced some significant changes in the process for claiming and reporting PDU’s. This new change went into effect on December 1, 2015. With this new change, PDU’s need to be split into three different categories:
- Technical
- Leadership
- Strategic & Business Management
In addition, each major certification (e.g., PMP, PMI-ACP) requires you to achieve a certain number of PDU’s in each of these categories in order to renew your certification (Total number of PDU’s is no longer sufficient).
I applaud this change. It is going in absolutely the right direction to elevate the project management profession and is very much in line with the direction I’ve been developing in my own courses. The thinking behind this change is that a project manager can no longer be just a technical administrator who manages project plans and schedules and that sort of thing. The essence of this change is that, in addition to that kind of technical project management role, a project manager must also have:
- Strong leadership skills (not just simply coordinate resources from a variety of functional departments) and
- Be able to play a value-added role that connects projects with driving strategic business goals (not just simply meeting project requirements and controlling budgets and schedules)
It’s very apparent to me that we are in the midst of a major transformation of the whole project management profession and you can see this clearly with Agile:
- The role of a project manager at the team level in a true Agile environment does not exist anymore in many environments, and
- If there is a role for a project manager, at all, in an Agile environment, it is a very different kind of role and may be at a higher level that requires strong people leadership skills as well as the ability to help define a project management approach that is well-aligned with the company’s business
These are exactly the challenges I have tried to address in all of my courses to help the project management profession move in this direction! All of my courses are eligible for PDU’s and you can find more information on all of my courses at the following location:
http://managedagile.com/training-courses/
For more details on the new PMI PDU process, go to the following location:
2015 Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) Program Updates