Question:
I have earned all 60 PDU in 2 years and have one year left of my first PDU cycle. Shall I now finish the PDU cycle or shall I wait just one year without earning any PDU?
This question is from Jens A. Wessels in Frankfurt Germany:
Answer:
PMI realizes that if you are an active project manager, then it is quite possible that you will earn more than 60 PDUs during your 3 year cycle. That is why the Continuing Certification Requirements System (at
www.pmi.org/ccrs
) will automatically transfer any PDUs over the required amount you need into the next cycle. This rule is the same for PMPs, PgMPs, PMI-RMPs and PMI-SPs. Here is the list of the maximum number of transferable PDUs:
PMP: 20 PDUs can be transferred
PgMP: 20 PDUs can be transferred
PMI-RMP: 10 PDUs can be transferred
PMI-SP: 10 PDUs can be transferred
There is only one catch with this: Only PDUs that you earned in the final year of your certification cycle can be transferred. What does this mean? It means that you have to make sure that you earn your PDUs in the "correct" year of your cycle, so that they will be transferred. Here are two bad examples of earning PDUs as a PMP or PgMP:
Bad example 1: If you earn 100 PDUs during your first year of the cycle, then only 60 PDUs will be applied towards your current cycle and the 40 PDUs that you went over are "lost". No PDUs will be transferred because the "overage" happened during your first year.
Bad Example 2: If you earn 100 PDUs during your third year of the cycle, then 60 PDUs will be applied towards your current cycle, 20 PDUs will be transferred to the next cycle, and 20 PDUs will be lost because only a max of 20 can be transferred. Here is what I do to always transfer the maximum number of PDUs: In the first 2 years of my cycle I make sure that the number of PDUs reaches 60. Then in the 3rd year of my cycle I go and earn another 20. In that way, these 20 PDUs from my 3rd year will automatically be transferred over to my next cycle.
