PMI® distinguishes two categories of Professional Development Units ( PDUs ):

• Learning PDUs
• Service PDUs that contribute to the profession of Project Management.

Learning PDUs are Frequently acquired by taking a course from:

1. PMI® Registered Education Partner ( REP® ) Category A
2. Another education provider Category B or
3. Through Self Directed Learning activities Category C

Future articles will describe other ways to earn PDU credits from the ‘Service Categories’ and have them recorded with PMI® in CCRS ( Course Completion and Recording System ).

This article focuses on Category C SDL ( self directed learning ).

With the change to the New PDU Category listings March 1 2011 there was an increase in the limit of SDL PDUs to 30 in a certification cycle. The previous limit of 15 allowed for only 15 hours of self directed planned learning.

You may wish to review our article where we discussed creating a PDU plan to run your Project Management Professional Development as you would a project with a definitive scope and timeline for completion.

Click here to read the “PDU Planning” article

We believe that as a Professional YOUR educational development is as important as any project you are working on. Projects come and go but building YOUR skill and YOUR competencies will add value to YOUR Projects and YOUR SUCCESSES!!

In this article we want to give you a glimpse of things to come and ask for your input to help us meet your needs.

Creating a Self Directed Learning Plan can be time consuming – exploring topics, finding resources and setting learning goals. We want to make it easy for you to earn up to the 30 PDUs available to you for self directed learning.

Especially for Category C ‘Self Directed Learning Activity’ remember to document your learning experience and its relationship to project management for your ‘PDU Audit Trail Folder’

We appreciate the support and encouragement of our readers. We are working on developing activities and learning primers to be able to provide direction that can assist you in getting started on your self directed learning journey to discover new information and hone your skills.

These Self Directed Learning Primers for our members will assist you in easily getting started learning about different topics in Project Management, Business Analysis, and Agile / Lean Practices. In order to focus these initiatives we would love more input from our audience.

We Want your feedback!!

1. Comment on our articles
2. Assist us by sending information about courses to Opportunity@pduOTD
3. Let us know about your Chapter or meet-up events by emailing Events@pduOTD.com
4. We always need international PMs to assist with finding and translating other opportunities offered in other languages. We service an international community and as of March 2011 we have been seen in 72 countries and more than 500 cities worldwide. We want to highlight more courses and opportunities in a variety of languages spoken by our audience. Contact us at Opportunity@pduOTD.com for more information on Volunteering (supporting your professional community earns you service PDUs).

What information would you like to see?

Email us as Hello@pduOTD.com and let us know about the topics and skills that you would like us to explore.

What topics do you want to explore more in depth?

• PMBOK & Key Process Areas ( KPAs )
  • Communications Management
  • Cost Management
  • General Project Management
  • Human Resources Management
  • Integration Management
  • Procurement Management
  • Quality Management
  • Risk Management
  • Scope Management
  • Time Management
  • Other Topics
• Other Topics
  • Agile Practices
  • Business Analysis
  • Career Development PM / BA / Agile
  • Certification
  • Change Management
  • Project Management Software
  • Information Technology
  • Management
  • Project Management Office (PMO)
  • Social Media
  • Work Breakdown Schedule – Scope
  • Other Topics

What type of resources are you comfortable with or prefer using when using in a learning plan?

• Web Resources
  • Linked and Hyper-linked pages
  • White Papers (pdf Format)
  • Videos
  • Audio Files / Podcasts
• Hard Copy Resources
  • Books
  • Magazines
  • Mind Maps
• A combination Of Methods

We want to provide you with a quality start to your individualized learning plan with topics and activities that will help you grow and hone your skills.

Please help us help you – Keep in touch 😉