A while ago I opened my email to find a fresh, consitently regular information from Cornelius’s PM Podcast service (hope you feel better now, Cornelius). This time the topic of the podcast was about changes to PDU (Professional Development Units) categories made by PMI. If you feel like learning about this, please take a look here…
I wanted to spend a moment to reflect on this PDU thing. Some of you might have come accross PDUs a while ago and wondered why did they exist in the first place or what was their value?
Project Management as an ever-changing discipline
There is a lot of “art” in Project Management. In that sense I find it similar to medicine. “Evidence-based” is more of an ideal, difficult to reach in practice. The complexity one finds in a typical project allows only basic support from project methodologies and business processes (applying methodologies — often complex by themselves — also requires experience). The best advice is then to constantly learn and re-learn, to “stay in touch” with our métier, pick different “angles” – methods, tools, and disciplines. Our toolbox needs to be challenged all the time. Continuous learning and improving one’s effectiveness and efficiency at that is a good option.
Nothing helps better than a healthy dose of routine
As a PMP one has to gather a number of points in a defined period — based on seminars, conferences attended, volunteering etc. To reach that goal regularity is advisable.
If you add the fact, that PMI Communities of Practice give countless learning opportunities free of charge (I’m a big fan of webinars, BTW), one can only appreciate the “healthy push.” The more we value others sharing, the more we feel the need to give back, to join this “best practice-generating cycle.” Involvement is where the fun starts.
