As professionals, we need to commit to continuing professional development, or CPD. When we do this, we can earn CPD points or, in PMI terms, Professional Development Units, or PDUs.
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Continuing Professional Development (CPD)
Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is an essential part of professional life. It is all of the learning experiences that help us develop and improve our professional practice.
Ongoing CPD involves:
- Identifying our current and future needs
- Setting learning objectives and targets
- Planning the learning activities to meet them
- Undertaking our learning activities
- Recording activities and achievements
- Reflecting on our learning and progress
It needs to be a continuous learning and development cycle.
So, what do you need to do?
You must take responsibility for finding and filling the gaps in your capabilities. This means scanning the horizon to figure out what changes are coming up in the profession – or what direction you might want to go in. To paraphrase the ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, CPD is largely about skating to where your career is going to be, not where it has been.
Look for help from managers, mentors, and colleagues, who can offer you good performance feedback. This will help you refine the direction of your learning and development.
From all of this, I advise you to make and maintain a Personal Development Plan (PDP). Include:
- What you want to learn in the next period
- How you will gain that learning
- How much time you will spend
Then, you need to find and pursue learning or opportunities to widen your skills and fill the gaps that will allow you to thrive in the next stage of your career.
Often, employers will support CPD activities. It is, after all, in their interests to do so. This may include funded training or paid time-off.
What are the CPD Learning Opportunities?
Let’s start with formal opportunities from further education and higher education institutions, and professional bodies. Qualifications, certifications, and accreditations are an important part of a project professional’s CPD. Organizations like IPM, PMI, APM, Scrum.org, and Axelos offer qualifications in project, program, and portfolio management. Project professionals will often hold accreditations from more than one professional body or academic institution.
Professionals with formal certifications or qualifications may need to follow a CPD regime, to maintain their status. And some professional bodies set CPD expectations. So, each professional organization publishes its own CPD requirements. Often these are expressed in CPD units or professional development units (PDUs). PMI, for example, sets a tariff of PDU (an hour of CPD or equivalent) for renewal of its certifications on a three-year cycle.
PMI CPD and PDUs
The requirements are usually stated in terms of the number of hours or units needed, and the types of learning or activity that are acceptable. PMI also splits its requirements according to the three elements of its Talent Triangle:
- Ways of Working (technical Project Management skills)
- Business Acumen (wider commercial knowledge)
- Power Skills (people-related capabilities)
How Many Ways to Learn?
CPD learning extends well beyond formal courses and qualifications. There are many ways to learn. These include:
- Courses: in-person or online, live or self-paced
- Reading: academic papers, articles in professional magazines, books, and blogs
- Discussion: professional communities, social media posts and discussions,
- Events: conferences, seminars, webinars, special interest groups
- Audio and Video: Podcasts and YouTube channels (like my own) offer a rich mix of knowledge and opinion
- Practical learning: work shadowing, placements, volunteering
- Contributing: writing and making presentations, articles, videos, webinars, books, blogs
- Creating: knowledge, methods, models, tools
- Peer learning: coaching, mentoring, conversations at the coffee machine
Getting all of the Benefits from CPD
‘Reflective practice’ describes active reflection on you learning and experiences. It is the best way to get the best from your continuous development activities. It is especially valuable as a way to harvest learning opportunities from your daily experiences, successes, setbacks and unresolved issues.
It is also important to keep a record of your learning and CPD. Update your Personal Development Plan and record your CPD on a CPD record sheet or log. In it, include:
- The activity: What you did to learn
- What you learned
- Where and when you did it
- The time you spent (CPD hours or PDUs)
- Who (if anyone) can witness your CPD
- Any formal evidence (like certificates)
My Free Project Management CPD Kit contains the templates you will need.
Recommended Videos to Help with Continuing Professional Development and PDUs
Carefully curated video recommendations for you:
- What are T Shaped People? | Video
- Is Project Management a Good Career? How Well Does it Pay?
- Building a Career in IT Project Management – with Andreanna Marshall
- Committing to Be a Professional Project Manager | Video
- Are You on Track with Your Project Management Career? | Video
- What’s the Next Step in Your Project Management Career? (Ikigai) | Video
- How to Pivot Your Career to AI – Artificial Intelligence Career
Recommended Articles to Help with Continuing Professional Development and PDUs
Carefully curated reading recommendations for you:
- 13 Reasons to Take up a Project Management Career
- PMI Education Contact Hours and PDUs: Your Essential Guide
- How To Advance Your Project Management Career
- How AI Knowledge will Help Your Project Management Career
What Kit does a Project Manager Need?
I asked Project Managers in a couple of forums what material things you need to have, to do your job as a Project Manager. They responded magnificently. I compiled their answers into a Kit list. I added my own.
Check out the Kit a Project Manager needs
Note that the links are affiliated.
Learn Still More
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If you want basic Management Courses – free training hosted on YouTube, with 2 new management lessons a week, check out our sister channel, Management Courses.
For more of our Project Management videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management.
For more of our videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management.
