Free Agile PDU List

I was juggling some ideas on how I could list some free "Agile" PMI-ACP or PDUs for people. I think there is a crazy amount of free resources for PMP PDUs.  Because of that, I think there needs to be more giving for the Agile contact hours or PDUs.  So, without getting too spamming and self-promoting, please feel free to list some places you know of that have free PDUs or contact hours to offer.  Make sure you list which PMI PDU category it is applicable to.  I will add them as well.  

I'm going to be a little self-promoting here.  If you would like some Category E (Volunteer Service) PDUs, come help the PMI Agile Community of Practice build and iterate the Community Guide of the ACP.  You can claim up to 45 PDUs for your efforts!

Image Source: Pictofigo

PMI Agile Contact Hours versus PMI-ACP PDUs

I get asked on a regular basis what the difference between a contact hour and a PDU is. When people come to my PMI-ACP exam prep class, they qualify to claim 21 Agile contact hours.  If they currently have another PMI credential, they could choose to apply those 21 hours as a PDU.

PMI Agile Contact Hours

When completing your PMI-ACP application, you are required to report (among other things) your "Agile" education. They will be referred to and measured as contact hours. To qualify to sit for the ACP exam, you need 21 contact hours.

 Professional Development Units (PDUs)

PDUs can only be applied if you have a PMI credential.  If you try to claim a PDU and you don't have a credential, PMI will politely either tell you don't have permission to that area of the website (where you claim the PDU) or they will send you a friendly email. The image below is only viewable if you have at least one PMI credential.

Hope this brief overview helps. If you have any questions, please leave a comment below.

How to Claim PMP PDUs as a Non-PMI Member

Claiming PDU

How would I claim PDUs if I'm not a PMI member? This question keeps coming up in conversation.  I offer the hypothetical situation where someone sees value in the new PMI-ACP certification but is hesitant to become a member of PMI.  I guess it would be complete fantasy if not for the fact there are about 100,000 more PMI credential holders than PMI members*. PMI reported as of November 2011, there were 370,744 PMI members and 469,051 PMPs.  Add the CAPM, PMI-RMP, PMI-SP, and PgMP and I think we get to our 100,000.

100,000 people realized you don't need to be a member of PMI to maintain a PMI credential, particularly the PMP.  They save a $119 membership renewal fee in exchange for being charged more for PMI events and products or not having access to the Communities of Practices.  Granted, if they aren't really engaged in the Project Management or Agile community, maybe it's worth saving the $10. For the record, I think being a member of the PMI Agile Community of Practice is worth the cost of membership.  Seriously, it's only $10 a month!  But I digress.

The focus of this post is for those 100,000.  The key to claiming PDUs is having a PMI.org account. Yes, the glue that holds this all together is a free account, not a paid membership.  Your potential membership and credentials will be linked to this account.

If you're applying "project management" educational credit toward exam eligibility, there is a different way to claim those hours.  For example, if you take my PMI-ACP class, you can apply 21 PDUs toward any of the current PMI credentials and also apply 21 contact hours toward ACP eligibility.

But you still don't need to have a paid membership.

*Source: December 2011 issue of PMI Today

PMI-ACP Prep Workshop

I am very excited to announce that I will begin offering my own 3-day PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner Certification Prep workshop, beginning September 26-28.  The workshop will be offered at the Bridge Education Training Facility located at 6716 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite 100, in Columbia, Maryland.  As an added bonus, for those who register for the September (and the to-be-announced October) class, I will give each attendee a free ticket to AgileDC 2011.

Count on 3 full days of learning, simulation, and Legos!

Who Should Attend/Prerequisites

Although this prep course is primarily targeted towards project management professionals interested in achieving the PMI-ACP(sm)  certification, it could benifit many others. It is an effective foundation for anyone interested in adopting and leveraging Agile techniques, including Product & Line Managers, Program Managers, IT Managers, or Senior Technicians.

Course Overview

The PMI-ACP(sm) certification requires the candidate to have 2,000 hours of general Project Management experience, 1,500 hours of Agile Project Management experience, 21 training hours in an Agile specific curriculum, and pass the PMI-ACP(sm) certification exam.

This course will satisfy all of the training requirements for the exam. After taking this course, students will have the strong foundation needed to begin preparing for the certification exam.

Take your course from one of only a few instructors who were independent reviewers of the curriculum, as it was being developed. As independent reviewers of the PMI-ACP, it was our job to modify, revise, update or delete elements to ensure that it was comprehensive, contemporary (reflective of current practice), concise, and clear.

Learning Objectives

The course will provide a broad survey of Agile PM tools, techniques, skills, and knowledge areas. Within the 3-Day course, we will cover all 6 domains of the upcoming PMI-ACP exam

• Value Driven Delivery

• Stakeholder Engagement

• Boosting Team Performance Practices

• Adaptive Planning

• Problem Detection and Resolution

• Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, People)

Some of the topics covered include:

• Active Listening

• Adaptive Leadership

• Agile Frameworks and Terminology

• Agile Manifesto Values and Principles

• Agile Project Accounting Principles

• Assessing and Incorporating Stakeholder Values

• Applying New Agile Practices

• Building High Performance and Empowered Teams

• Coaching and Mentoring within teams

• Communications Management

• Co-Located and Geographically Distributed Teams

• Conflict Resolution

• Continuous Improvement

• Elements of a Project Charter for an Agile project

• Facilitation Methods

• Feedback Techniques (e.g. Prototypes, Simulation, Demonstration, Evaluation)

• Globalization, Culture, and Team Diversity

• Incremental Delivery

• Innovation Games

• Knowledge and Information Sharing

• Leadership tools and Techniques

• PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct

• Problem Solving Strategies

• Product Roadmapping

• Progressive Elaboration

• Project and Quality Standards

• Principles of Systems Thinking (e.g., complex adaptive, chaos)

• Servant-Leadership

• Stakeholder Management

• Team Motivation Techniques

• Time, Budget, and Cost Estimation

• Variations of Agile Methods and Approaches

• Value Based Analysis, Decomposition, and Prioritization

When:

Monday, September 26, 2011 9:00 AM - Wednesday, September 28, 2011 4:30 PM (Eastern Time)

Where:

Bridge Education Training Facility 6716 Alexander Bell Dr. Suite 100 Columbia, Maryland 21046

Cost:

$1,495 per attendee (plus travel and expenses for private workshops)

Drawing courtesy of Pictofigo

Getting PMI Agile PDUs Early

Let's say you're interested in the upcoming Agile Project Professional (APP) certification from PMI.  You look to see the eligibility requirements and notice you'll need 21 hours of Agile Project Management Training.  If you're determined to get the PMI APP and looking to do this on the cheap, start watching webinars now. I can guarantee there will be a lot of training opportunities in the near future.  Check out a future location to find upcoming Agile PDUs. Once it is fully rolled out, it should be an excellent resource to find PDUs to meet your PMI needs. So back to the intent of getting the training.  After I read (and recently reread) Dan Pink’s book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, it made me stop and question why people wanted to get the PMP or APP.  Are we trying to discover better ways to deliver value to customers or just trying to get a piece of paper and a few extra letters after our names?  Dan breaks it down to pursuing the mastery of performance-based objectives versus learning-based objectives (ie. getting a passing score on a certification exam versus learning new approaches to deliver value to customers).

Regardless, information is information and I want to do what I can to help people discover it.

One of the approaches I really enjoy using is Kanban.  Today I stumbled upon a free Kanban webinar.  Though you do have to enter some contact information, it's free.  You have the option of downloading it or viewing a playback.  So, regardless if you're looking to bank those PMI Agile PDUs or not, enjoy 1 free hour of training.  By the way, I am in no way affiliated with the provider.   I just like free webinars.

HT: ASPE Events HT: Agile PDUs

Link to Drive is an Amazon affiliate link Drawing by Pictofigo

Free Webinar & PDU (The Lean BA)

I believe if you're trying to maintain your credential, particularly the PMP, you should not pay a dime for Professional Development Units (PDUs). Seriously, paying for 60 PDU's (the amount required per 3-year cycle) could break the bank. I know people make a living by selling products and services to others who are looking for an easy path to maintaining their PMP.  Though it frustrates me that people want to get PDUs without wanting to learn, it frustrates me more that there is an ecosystem supporting it.  So, this is my small attempt to continually disrupt the current system.  Below is information on 1 free webinar worth 1 free PDU.

The Lean BA

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Tuesday, February 08, 2011

12:00 pm Eastern Time 11:00 am Central Time 10:00 am Mountain Time 9:00 am Pacific Time This is a 1 hour seminar and attendees will be awarded 1 PDU for participating.

Seminar Description: The lean business analysis web seminar starts by explaining the foundations of lean IT before getting into the impacts of how lean IT affects business analysis. The presentation discusses how some existing approaches work well and others present more challenges to lean business analysis and projects.

Seminar Presenter: ASPE-SDLC instructor Jake Calabrese

Registration is open Register for this FREE web seminar

I am in no way being compensated for listing this free webinar, unless you count the satisfaction of knowing somebody out there is going to click this link and learn something (and get a free PDU).  It's that simple.

Like the drawing? Find it here, on Pictofigo

Free PMI (Agile) PDUs

pdu

One of the points of contention that I've heard, when interviewing both current and former Project Management Professionals (PMPs), is the difficulty of reporting Professional Development Units (PDUs).  I know people who chose to NOT renew their PMP and their memberships with PMI becuase of the process of collecting and submitting PDU information was too arduous, outweighing the value the accreditation and membership provided. The result I've seen is people paying to get PDUs in bulk or paying for the process to be easier.  I think this is a bit of a tragedy.  So, I want help you get 1 PDU for free.  All you have to do is click the link, enter a little contact information, and you'll get a link to a free 1 hour webinar.

From September through December, VersionOne offered a series of free Agile webinars.  There are a total of 6 Agile centric webinars, all free of charge.  Because I am a strong Agile proponent, I want more Project Managers exposed to Agile concepts.  This is a perfect opportunity for those looking to learn more about Agile to also earn a few PDUs.  To make it easy on you, I've added the PDU information below.

The Role of the Project Manager in Modern Agile Projects

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/556452601

Many groups adopting an agile development approach fail in ways that can be traced back to the missing project manager role. In other words, they didn't understand what good project managers do in the first place. In this talk, Dr. Cockburn starts from ten critical project success factors, relates those to PMI project phases and to the overall value and purpose of a project manager, leading to what a good project manager provides to even the most rabidly agile team (and also other project teams, of course).

PMI PDU Category: 4 Program/Title description: The Role of the Project Manager in Modern Agile Projects Process: Initiating, Planning, Executing, Closing Knowledge area: Scope, Risk, Communications Industry: Information Systems Provider name: Dr. Alistair Cockburn / VersionOne Address: 6220 Shiloh Road, Suite 400 City: Atlanta State: Georgia Zip: 30005 Country: United States

PDUs: 1

Those PMI PDUs

OK, so you got your certification or accreditation through the Project Management Institute (PMI).  Now you need to plan on getting 60 PDUs over the next 3 years.  Is this too much to ask?  I don't think so.  How would you feel if your doctor never learned anything new, upon graduating from medical school?  Stakeholders should feel that same about people managing or leading projects. Over the course of the last few years, I've witnessed quite a few people who don't actually work as project managers get their PMP.  I know, you've heard me rant about this before.  But, since these people were able to navigate the system, what can the system do?  Well, I see the PDU as a mechanism that can continually attempt to separate the wheat from the chaff.   For some who really aren't contributing to the profession, and were just looking for three initials for a resume, the added cost and effort might not be worth it.  To be fair, I also know people who are very experienced and knowledgeable in the area of project management.  Requiring them to seek out and log PDUs is just an added deterrent to getting the PMP.

Back on topic, I break down the people getting PDUs into 2 groups.  Those who earn their PDUs over the course of 3 years and those who buy theirs.   Since I watch at least 1 free project management related webinar every other week, I ask myself why anyone would ever pay for them.  But, I digress.  Upon hearing the PMI was introducing a new PDU category structure as of 1 March 2011, I figured I would take a look.  What was once 15 categories will now be 7.  Without going into grotesque detail, I'm going to give you the 50,000 foot review.  In plain English, I like it.

Not only did the PMI modernize the language to include blog, webinar, and podcast, but they also grouped the PDU categories into 2 divisions.

1. (Receiving) Education

2. Giving Back to the Profession

I particularly like the language of "giving back".  When I think of the PMI, being charitable or giving back isn't really one of the first things that comes to mind.  I see this category naming as a step in the right direction.  I noted my disappointment in the lack of giving back in October (2010), when I was comparing the AgileDC conference and the PMI North American Congress.

I only have 2 recommended changes, if PMI would consider making a modification to the PDU requirements of the future.  First, I would ask PMPs to get PDUs in all 5 process groups.  I think people tend to get PDUs in process group or knowledge areas they are already proficient.  Second, now that the PMI has identified giving back to the profession, perhaps in a few years they'll add giving back to the community?

Like the image?  Find it at Pictofigo