Associations love acronyms, and the federal government likes to make acronym soup as well. Project Managers love acronyms more than anyone, so you can imagine the acronyms floating around the association dedicated to Project Managers: the Project Management Institute (PMI).
PMI has a few certification programs (PMI-SP, PMI-RMP, PMI-PgMP), but the certification that I’ve had since 2006 is the Project Management Professional (PMP). While much of the country may not value the PMP credential as much as they should, the PMP is highly valued around DC.
Obtaining the PMP is a pretty grueling process that involves a prerequisite of thousands of hours of actual Project Management experience, dedicated and specific project management education, PROVING this experience and education through an exhaustive application process and finally by taking a certification exam. This particular exam leaves nearly everyone walking away feeling like they did not pass.
Maintaining the PMI PMP certification requires reporting and proving your CCR PDUs. To keep your PMP, you need to adhere to PMI’s Continuing Certification Requirements (CCR) program. To follow this program, you really only need to participate in qualified professional development activities, which in turn earn you professional development units (PDUs) to maintain your credential. These PDU units can be obtained through work experience, volunteer work, formal education, webinars, conferences, and by contributing to the overall knowledge around project management, such as blogging, authoring books, speaking, teaching, etc.
Due to the nature of the work that I do, I end up having more than enough hours of practical work experience, education, and contribution activities – but I still have to aggregate, formalize, and submit all of the credential CCR PDU information.
I finally made the time to aggregate and supply all of my requisite PDU information to PMI to keep my Project Management Professional (PMP) certification active for 3 more years. I got my email with the subject line: Congratulations! You have renewed your PMI credential
Well, the celebration is over, and it’s now time to get back to earning and documenting my PDUs again.
