Question:
I am a certified PMP and have been offering coaching /mentoring services to fellow colleagues at work and also friends who want to pursue PMP certifications, how can I go about claiming PDU'S? Do I need to get letters from friends/colleagues and how do I present to PMI the number of hours? Also please how many max PDU's can I claim, under what category? - Prashant Vashi

Answer:
Mentoring your colleagues on project management topics is a great way to share your knowledge and earn PDUs. From personal experience I also know that as a mentor you learn a lot yourself, so mentoring also keeps your project management know-how up to date and your mind sharp.

Unfortunately, if I understand your situation correctly, then you are not able to claim any PDUs for the type of mentoring you are doing. Let me explain.
Coaching and mentoring falls into PDU Category E. PMI requires that the mentoring you do focuses around project management as a discipline, which would include methodologies, approaches, tools and techniques, best practices, or discussing an ongoing project to lending mentoring support. However, if I read your question correctly, then you are coaching your colleagues and friend in regards to what they have to do in order to prepare for and pass the PMP exam. From the perspective of PMI this is not considered to be "mentoring on project management topics" but "assisting with a project management product/offering". There are no PDUs for doing that.

I have a very similar problem: I write a lot of articles about the PMP Exam - like how to prepare for it, what to study, how to study, etc. But because PMI considers a certification to be a "PM product/offering" and not a "PM topic" I cannot claim PDUs for writing these articles.

However, there is a silver lining because you might be able to claim Category D PDUs for what you are doing.

Are you giving formal training to your colleagues and friends on the 9 Knowledge Areas from the PMBOK Guide? For instance, do you teach them about the concepts, tools and techniques of Scope, Time, Quality, etc? If the answer is yes, then you are serving as an instructor for a project management related course. Every hour preparing and teaching is worth one PDU in Category D (up to a maximum of 45).

_______________________________________

Question: Thank you very much for a detailed response, appreciate. I would say I am mentoring on the 9 knowledge areas of PMBOK processes, also coaching and making them understand better on the Quality/Risk/Estimation/stake holder analysis etc. I can confidently say out of the 5 total colleagues/friends, two of them have only goals of passing the PMP exams, while others its more like sharing/learning on the 9 knowledge processes. Please advise how how should move forward to claim my PDU's, thanks in advance. - Prashant Vashi

Answer:
Based on your answer I would say that you can go ahead and claim Category D PDUs. To be 100% certain I would also write to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and explain your situation to them. They will be able to tell you exactly what to do.

But to me it sounds like D.