Certification Insider

If you have a PMI certification like the Project Management Professional (PMP)®, PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)®, or even the Certified Associate in Project management (CAPM)® then your certification is only good for three years. During these three years you have to earn 60 Professional Development Units (PDUs) through training or other approved activities. And once you have those 60 PDUs, then you can renew the certification for another three years. And this cycle of earning PDUs and renewing continues for as long as you want to keep your PMP status.

There are many ways in which you can earn PDUs. Taking a training, reading a book or giving a presentation are just three options you have. So you could simply jump head in first and sign up for whatever training comes across your path. But having a plan and a process for doing this is a much better idea.

And that's what this episode is all about. I'm going to give you a 10-step process that you can follow in order to earn your PDUs with purpose and make your life easier. It's a recording of a live streaming event that I gave a few days ago. It was a very lively event with quite a few questions coming in.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

A few weeks ago, Cornelius Fichtner was interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver Lehmann of the Project Business Foundation about his career as a project manager, project leader and experience in project busines management. Here is the announcement:

For many practitioners in project management, Cornelius Fichtner is a household name. He is known mostly for the digital offerings of his company OSP International LLC, such as the PM PrepCast for project managers heading for the PMP® certification of PMI®, the Project Management Institute.

Meanwhile, his lineup of exam preparation tools was expanded by a family of further podcasts, augmented with simulators and inhouse offerings for corporations.

Much less known are his personal roots in project management and particularly in project business management.

Interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver F. Lehmann, he will tell us the most interesting stories of his years as a consultant and project manager under contract, working hard to make the customer happy, but also with the obligation to make the project profitable.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

A few weeks ago, Cornelius Fichtner was interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver Lehmann of the Project Business Foundation about his career as a project manager, project leader and experience in project busines management. Here is the announcement:

For many practitioners in project management, Cornelius Fichtner is a household name. He is known mostly for the digital offerings of his company OSP International LLC, such as the PM PrepCast for project managers heading for the PMP® certification of PMI®, the Project Management Institute.

Meanwhile, his lineup of exam preparation tools was expanded by a family of further podcasts, augmented with simulators and inhouse offerings for corporations.

Much less known are his personal roots in project management and particularly in project business management.

Interviewed by Martin Berneburg and Oliver F. Lehmann, he will tell us the most interesting stories of his years as a consultant and project manager under contract, working hard to make the customer happy, but also with the obligation to make the project profitable.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

In the previous episode, Andrew Kallman gave us an introduction to the concept of Flow from the book that he and his brother wrote.

And today, we are going to open up the book - which is called Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It - and we are going to look at chapter two more closely. This chapter discusses "Vision" and how that relates to the flow concept.

Some of the topics you'll hear about are prioritization, aha moments, leadership, how flow can be used in scaling of Agile, the importance of trust in the process, and of course, there is always my favorite question at the end of the interview: How can we apply all of this on our projects today?

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)

(Click to download MP3...)

Last week, I must have missed the start of at least three scheduled meetings. In each case, I saw on my calendar that the meetings would start in an hour or less, which meant that I could probably start and finish another task before I had to be at those meetings. And each time, I got so involved in the task I was working on that I lost track of everything around me and the meetings started without me.

In positive psychology, this is called a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone. This is the mental state in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.

Wouldn’t it be great, if we could apply this to all our projects and everyone working on it? You can.

To see how flow can be applied to our projects, we are welcoming Andrew Kallman to the program. He and his brother Ted Kallman wrote the book Flow: Get Everyone Moving in the Right Direction...And Loving It and Andrew is here today to give us an introduction.

Here is how someone describes the effect flow has had on their projects: Flow is when you know where you are headed, know what your goal is, and know the steps necessary to get there. It's like running a race. You don't plan each step along the way, but you keep your eyes on the finish line, and everything you do moves you toward it thanks to your training.

(This interview was originally published on The Project Management Podcast.)