krincvaj.eu | An article by Lukas Krincvaj, Senior Digital Consultant

PMI PMP Certificate Renewal: On-Demand Webinars

PMI PMP Certificate Renewal, Part 2: On-Demand Webinars

Watch webinars and have your PDUs reported directly to PMI.org

03.11.2020

Earning the Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from Project Management Institute (PMI) may be the end of one journey but it is also the start of another. The certification is not valid for life: to truly be a PMP, you need to keep up with the fast changing world of project management, work on improving your skills, engage with the PM community - and by completing all these tasks, you earn Professional Development Units (PDUs). These units are very important because they allow you to renew your certification - which you need to do that every 3 years.

In this series of articles, I am going to give you my tips and tricks on how to earn the PDUs you need - and it will be up to you to decide which of these methods work best for you.

So sit down, relax, have a cuppa - part 2 is here and the guests of honour are: on-demand webinars from ProjectManagement.com.

I personally enjoy webinars - both live and on-demand - because they both bring different value to the life of a project manager. So while the live webinars offer the unique possibility of being able to ask the presenter a question, the on-demand webinars are a great source of information that I can consume at my convenience, regardless of whether I'm on a train coming home from work or during a sleepless night with the full Moon out, combing through my once-a-month temporary fur. Another great fact is that there are so many out there - aside from ProjectManagement.com (which I will discuss in a little bit), you can find relevant, inspirational, and helpful videos for free on the following sites:

Of course, there are also paid options available, such as Lynda.com, Udemy, Coursera, or Masterclass.

Note: All links above lead to a particular PM-related list of resources which is likely non-exhaustive. Therefore, please feel free to explore the rest of the websites. Please keep in mind that videos of a duration under 1 hour cannot be counted for a full PDU and, therefore, I would suggest you create a watchlist and report multiple videos together.

Let's do a quick deep dive on ProjectManagement.com and why it's great for you. First of all, if you are an active PMI member, you have full complimentary access to all webinars. If you are not a member, there are still many videos for you to watch and learn from for free. Simply select Login with PMI on the Login page and that's it, you can use the many advantages described in this article.

PDU widgetNext on my list is the ease of PDU management and reporting. Each webinar has a predefined number of PDUs, divided into the appropriate categories, that you earn by watching the video in its entirety. Therefore, you don't need to think about things such as "how long was the video, how many PDUs can I record, what categories should I use". And, if you connect your PMI.org profile with your ProjectManagement.com profile, these PDUs are automatically recorded into your profile! And if for some reason, these PDUs are not automatically recorded in your PMI.org profile, you can manually export a Certificate of Completion in your Account Settings under PDUs Awarded and use that as proof.

PDU widgetThere is another advantage to connecting your PMI.org profile with ProjectManagement.com website. If you do that, you get a handy widget on the on-demand webinar homepage which shows your certification renewal date, how many PDUs you already earned in what categories and, based on this information, ProjectManagement.com recommends webinars for you to watch, helping you grow in the areas that you need.

Finally, in today's world where travel is strongly restricted, many conferences and events moved to one digital platform or another. Previously, if a project manager from let's say eastern Europe wanted to see what's going on, what's new in the USA, they would usually have to pay for a "virtual ticket" which would give them access to the recordings from the conference. With COVID, these policies are changing and events held digitally are shared for free for PMs from all over the world. You can use the built in search function to find these.