MikeDePrisco0721.mp4 - powered by Happy Scribe

All right, well, I see by my clock, it's two minutes after the hour. So good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everyone. We're lucky to have Michael DePrisco from PMI here today to talk to us about memberships and certifications around the world from PMI. So with that, Mike, could you please introduce yourself and kick us off?

Yeah, happy to do so. Hi, Michael. Hello, everyone. It's good to be here with you today. As Michael said I'm Mike DePrisco I'm Chief Operating Officer, PMI been with PMI for about eight years. Prior to PMI spent about 20 plus years in the higher education industry and at PMI have performed a number of executive leadership roles around our academic programs, membership, chapter certification, eye care for all the operations of the organization in my current role.

And I'm happy to be here to to talk to you about PMI today.

Great, thanks, Mike. So could we start off by maybe telling us a little bit of history of PMI. Where did they start? Why did they start? What's PMI all about?

Yeah, PMI started was founded by volunteers. I think that is one of the things that really differentiates PMI from many organizations. We were founded by volunteers and in a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in nineteen sixty nine. We've always been about helping individuals gain the skills and capabilities they need to deliver projects and programs effectively in their organizations. And fast forward 50 years and we are now the global leader in project and program management. And we have more than six hundred thousand members, one and a half million certification holders.

We have three hundred chapters and fourteen thousand volunteers around the world, and we partner with many organizations like Medtronic and others to help really advocate for the profession and provide the types of tools and solutions that you need to do your job effectively. So I can go on. But that's in a nutshell who we are, our history. And I look forward to getting into some of the other details of it.

Great. Thank you. So how does membership work at TMI? What is the membership? What are the different levels of membership? How do you become a member? What things can you get free versus a member, a member on those type of things? You go a little more detail there, please. Yeah. You know, PMI has always been a membership organization. So really membership is at the core of who we are. And it's where individuals can really access a lot of value in order to obtain the resources, the information, the connections to the profession.

So we have right now a standard membership program where an individual can go to PMI.org and join as a full member for one hundred and twenty nine dollars. And by doing so, that unlocks a great deal of value access to our PMBOK guide, the professional standards for project management. It gives you discounts on certifications, on events, on digital learning, in learning programs that we have. It opens up a whole network of individuals that work and practice in the project and program management space through our global community, projectmanagement.com and on projectmanagement.com You can access not only a network and connect with people, but there's hundreds of webinars and white papers and tools and templates that are available to you. It's it's not unusual for people to go to our websites. And because they're looking for a particular template or some type of information that they can download, print or share and use in their their job that day. We also have membership for students. We do have about forty five thousand student members.

So they for twenty nine dollars get access to a range of benefits that are appropriate for a student. And it's a real nice introduction to students of what PMI is and how it can help them in their career. So we're looking to evolve our membership program as well. Later this year, early into Next will be introducing a new program where we'll have three tiers of membership to choose from three different prices that that offer different types of value and benefits at each price, because we really believe in giving our members options and giving them choice when it comes to affiliating with us.

Now, that's great. Can you can you go maybe a little more detail on the chapters of the chapters work in with the membership? I know typically there's I don't know how many chapters there are currently chapters all over the world, but you get, you know, other other resources by being a chapter member too.

Yeah, thank thank you for that, because the chapter program really is the the heartbeat of PMI. So we have more than three hundred I think it's about three hundred and ten chapters located in two hundred plus countries around the world, and they are run by and managed by volunteers and we support them as, as PMI. And but they really are the ones that are boots on the ground, running various programs to benefit the individuals in their local communities that are very much connected to organizations within the community.

They put on a variety of events and networking opportunities and they charge typically a small fee to join and take advantage of those benefits. It's anywhere from ten dollars a year to thirty dollars a year and there's a great deal of benefit. You can earn a lot of paedos through your chapter. You can get involved in a volunteer position. But in order to join a chapter, you need to be connected to PMI as an individual member first. Right. So it's individual membership and then you can join a local chapter.

That's something that is of interest to you.

And that's great, and you said you're going to be doing a tiered system for membership, is there any thoughts? And I've asked many people about this, I probably know the answer, but I'll ask her, is there any thoughts of doing a corporate membership?

You know, we are thinking about that. And we've been doing, as you know, more and more work in the area of business to business, if you will, and trying to find unique value that we can offer to a company in the form of a membership. Up to now, our memberships are very individually focused versus company focused. So we think within the next year, year and a half, that we will have some type of offering, that we can go to an organization and say, hey, join as an organization.

Here are the benefits that you get. Here are the benefits that your employees get. But we we are looking at that because it's very much something that we we hear quite it quite frequently from organization partners.

Yeah, I'll just put in our plug. We'd love to have.

Yeah, I'm sure you would.

It would help our organization being one hundred thousand people really spread the PMI knowledge and whatnot, so I'll leave it at that. So one thing with membership is there might be people out there saying, hey, you have a membership, that's great. But, you know, I'd really like to kick the tires and try some things out. I know during COVID there were things that were beta tested and there's things that are free. Can you explain to people, hey, I'm not sure about being a family member, but I can try these out for free.

Like, I can't remember if kickoff is free. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But some of the rules are really good. Maybe some of those would be great.

Yeah, we we that's that's a great question. We you know, we've always been about giving back to the community at PMI and certainly during the pandemic we we heard from many of our stakeholders who were out of work or stuck at home, you know, and and wanting to stay connected to their, you know, their professional development and so forth. And we're looking to PMI for help. So we had a we put out a number of free offerings and in fact, there they're still free and we'll continue to be free for the foreseeable future.

Digital learning offerings, you know, on topics like business continuity, agility, project management, program management and so forth, that's actually still available on our website. You can get to it by going to pemphigoid and you can find those resources. But in addition to that, we've also been developing some new solutions and products. As Michael alluded to, one is called Kickoff, and it's a great interactive tool. You can access it on your laptop or on your mobile device.

It's a free offering. It's focused on understanding the basics of project management. We cover predictive traditional project management approaches. We also cover agile approaches. It's interactive, there's quizzes, there's use cases that are really designed to help someone that's new to managing projects, kind of understand the world of projects. And again, it's free. I would encourage you to check it out, take a look at it, give us feedback. It's something that we launched this past year.

I think we've had about fifty thousand people give or take, use the product and we're getting some good feedback. So it would be great if folks from Medtronic would take a look at it.

Yeah, and I think that came from the scrapie, from the actually that I come from a global executive. Yeah. Young experts. Youngperts.

Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. So for those who might not know, Medtronic is part of our PMI global executive council. It's an elite exclusive group of organizations that we bring together on a regular basis for networking to exchange knowledge, to share best practices and so forth. Michael is the council representative for Medtronic, been a long time partner, PMI, and it gives great visibility to Medtronic. It gives us an opportunity to share things with with your organization, what's happening in the in the world, the project and program management.

We published a lot of research and things like that. And we develop new products with the help of council members. And off was, as Michael said, a product that came out of some workshops within the council. So we were really, really happy about being able to make that available to the market.

Yeah, and I'll add to that that I think it's pretty exciting to see those young folks come with cardboard cutouts of what that could look like another day. They had it on the phone and then it now is kicked off. I've actually taken that and I really liked it. I like those templates you can download so people don't know what they're doing. They can download different templates and it only takes about 30 to 40 minutes. It's not too long. It's pretty interactive.

It's kind of fun. And I actually had a nonprofit I was working for doing pro bono work. I had all those people doing project management take that before teaching a course. And it really helped to go through Stakeholder Management Project Charter. If they knew what we were talking about, they didn't have to read the pen back or whatever. And I fired some people to do more things. So, yeah. So I think it's a really good tool.

Well, and if you have kids, especially teenagers, make them make them use the tool, they can gain some really good skills as well to help them in their in their career or in college.

I totally agree. So maybe switching switching to kind of the current and future strategy of PMI. I know there's a lot there. You could probably talk for hours on at high-level. Where is the current strategy? Where do you see the future strategy going?

Yeah, so I think it's a good question. I'll try to keep it concise. But you know, PMI, we've always been about helping project and program managers get better, you know, acquire skills, competencies, capabilities. They need to be successful. And our strategy very much is connected to continuing to provide new products and solutions to help our core audience, a project and program managers stay ahead of the curve. Right. New technologies, new ways of working new approaches to delivering projects and programs.

We want to make sure that we're developing the solutions that allow you to continue to see PMI is the go to place for support for your career. We're also looking to expand our reach as an organization into what we're calling a Changemaker audience. And it's a label. Changemaker is a label. It's really meant to describe people who are not project and program managers, per say, but they work and they work in jobs and they work in organizations where they need some type of project skills to get their work done.

And how can PMI provide some support to those individuals? And again, the reason why we're focused on this is we want to really extend our reach to to demonstrate the value of the project and program management provides to every sector, every industry, every geography there. So that's where our focus has been. And, you know, in addition to new products, we're partnering with new organizations, organizations that again rely on on project work to get things done as a way to really just increase our impact.

With all that being said, maybe maybe you could dive a little bit more deeper on what you call PMI 4.0.

Yeah, no, that's great. So so we our strategy, it's we named the PMI 4.0 and it it really is designed to be a growth strategy. And when we say gross, we mean impact in terms of impacting the world in a much more significant way than than we are today. And we have four key areas that we focus on that we're focusing on to to to realize that growth one is partnerships with other associations with other like minded nonprofit for purpose organizations to see if there's ways that we can enter into agreements where our members can take advantage of the offerings that the organization has available.

And likewise, that organization can take advantage of the offerings that we have. We're talking to organizations like the AARP, for example. They have out there doing a lot of great work in promoting multigenerational workforce needs and so forth. And a lot of it's based in projects and we think there's an opportunity there. We're also we continue to focus on social impact. We have a educational foundation that is working with nonprofits that that support youth because we recognize how important it is that young people learn basic project skills.

We know it's going to help them in their life. And we're also doing a lot more work in the area of organization partnerships, working with companies like Medtronic and others to find ways where we can better address some of the pain points that organizations have in terms of getting there, their strategic initiatives delivered to their stakeholders. So there are some of the key aspects of the four point strategy.

So that's great. Thank you. Got a couple of questions here, Mike. Maybe we'll go over to a couple of these questions. So are there any special considerations for veterans who are seeking membership and PMI?

So we don't have a veteran program right now for membership, but we have partnered with Pearson VUE, who delivers all of our certifications around the world with the exception of China. And they have a big presence on military bases. And we have partnered with Pearson VUE, as well as many of the veteran organizations to help individuals coming out of the military or maybe they're veterans access funding that the military may be able to to make available, to use it to apply toward membership and certification.

Many of our vets and many military individuals are running projects day in and day out. So what we're trying to do, working with our chapters is help those individuals translate that experience. They get in the military to project experience so that they can apply and sit for one of our examinations and to make it convenient, they can do it on a military base. They can get military funding for it and then connect into a local chapter that has a vet program or military program to create that connection and that belonging that is so, so key in the military.

So that's that's kind of some of the work we've been doing with military.

So I know that's great, and I'm on the board of directors of the Minnesota PMI chapter and we're actually we're actually doing that military part of it with our chapter and it's going quite well. So thank you. Another question here seems as if the PM's focus has historically been focused on the individual. Do you see anything on the horizon that works at the PMO level?

Yeah, great question. So, yes, we we have primarily been focused on individual professional development. But at the same time, we also understand that the integral role that PMO's play in helping individuals really reach their potential as it relates to delivering projects and programs. So we've published a number of research reports on PMO's effectiveness, how to get the most out of your PMO, how to some of the some of the issues and factors and dynamics at play that require you to rethink your PMO, how the PMO can really become a strategic partner within the business.

So it's much broader than just delivering projects and programs. It's about delivering the strategy and getting the entire organization aligned around how projects and programs help us achieve that strategy. So we we don't have any specific certification for PMO. I know we've we've gotten that question a lot. And we just through our market research and conversations with PMO leaders, there doesn't seem to be an appetite for it. So what we focused instead is around knowledge and information, reports, research.

Then we have a PMO Symposium when we did prior to covid will, we'll eventually get back to it. That really brings PMO leaders together and gives them opportunities to really talk about and learn about new new advances in PMO delivery and successes and so forth.

No, that's great, and actually, that PMO event would be coming up here in November.

I know I know that that was one of the last events I went to in Denver. Yeah, yeah, I've heard good things, never been there, but it's a it's a great event and it's it's it's a good event. I plan to get there, so I think it's great. So maybe switching back gears a little bit to something you touched on, but something I'd like you to talk a little bit more honest. I think it's really good.

Is the PMI navigator tool. I think during covid you offered that up as a free tool for people that want to go on and look at that. And, you know, I went in there and did it. It's basically a tool that looks at your career in training certification. Then it gives you a report as to here's what you could do to get where you want to go. I think it's really unique and I think it's very unique to the project management profession and PMI.

So maybe you could talk a little bit about it.

It is a it is a free tool. It's a it's a personal assessment. And I would encourage anyone to do it regardless of where you are in your career. I did it just to see what it would spit out to me. But essentially, it's what Michael said. It's a self assessment. You enter information in to the tool all about yourself, your background, where you are, where you want to go professionally and so forth. And it serves up a set of recommendations for you on how you might want to develop professionally different types of certifications or other educational paths that you may want to explore.

Our vision for it is that you will recommend a number of different solutions for you there. They may be PMI solutions, but they also may be solutions from other from other partners, other organizations. Certainly PMI doesn't doesn't do everything right. And we're so we're looking for ways to enhance the tool. But I would check it out again. You can get to it through our our website. And if you register, give us your name and contact information.

You can get into the tool. And yeah, I think it's really good whether you're new, whether you're senior, it's it's a good tool to help give you some insight that maybe you didn't have about some opportunities for economic development perspective.

Yeah, and I would also say that I have taken the assessment and I found it to be good and have some interesting things in their insights that I didn't really think about. So I recommend to everyone to take that might. Switching gears a little bit now to the certification side. And I know there's a lot of things that we could talk at length, but maybe starting at the beginning, you brought up the piece a couple of times. You have this I think it's called Project Ready, or I might have the words wrong, but it's for anyone from five to seventy five.

It's fairly new, but it's kind of that precursor to the CAPM and the PMP. Maybe we could start there and kind of walk. Walk that. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things we heard from from the market is a need for some type of basic entry level certification for individuals that may be in high school or early college and just getting their feet wet with with the world of work and may be looking to gain some valuable knowledge in the area of projects. So we developed, along with our partners at Pearson VUE, a certification called PM Ready. It is designed primarily, primarily for I would say fifteen to twenty twenty-one year olds.

And it gives them an opportunity to learn basics of project management and earn a certification from PMI and really to get them started on what we hope is a lifelong journey of project work and connection with PMI. So we're currently introducing it in a number of high schools and traditional high schools, career and technical education, high schools around the world, and very excited about that. And then, of course, from there you can step into our entry level professional certification, which is the CAPM, which is very much connected to and focused on and aligned to the PMBOK guide.

And you and of course, I'm sure we're going to get into the PMP. But but the PM Ready CERT is. Yeah, it's new. We launched it about a year ago, so we're starting to see some good uptake right now on.

Great. Maybe quickly before we go to the PMP, I know that PMBOKs seventh edition has hit the market. I believe it was I believe it was late July. I could be wrong, but I do have my hard copy. So I do have a copy. Maybe just really quickly, a little bit of what the thought process was behind it. I think everyone's excited that it's out there. But yeah, we've been waiting for a while and I know it came a little earlier than was even expected.

So that's great.

Yeah, it's you know, yeah. It's been a while. It feels like we've we've been talking about it for about a year and a half, two years, and we did bring it to market early July. It is out in both digital as well as hard copy and we're very excited about it. And it's two hundred and seventy five pages, by the way, which is a fraction of what the sixth edition, fifth edition PMBOK guides are. So we've gotten some great feedback on it and we've completely changed it.

So there's you know, it remains the standard for project management. It's ANSII accredited it is a global standard for project management, but it also now is much more focused around outcomes. It's less prescriptive. It encompasses more approaches to how project work gets done. So it's not strictly focused around, say, waterfall or traditional practices. It also is inclusive of agile and high hybrid approaches to how work gets done. It's based on principles rather than process. So it's much more applicable to your your context, your industry, your organization.

And then, of course, it has a number of resources available to help guide you as you were working to deliver your projects and programs in in your in your organization. So as usual, it was developed by a global group of volunteers. The whole process is led by volunteers. The staff at PMI simply just facilitate the process. So it truly is a product that was created by the profession for the profession. So we're very excited about it. And I hope you enjoy it.

I hope you get an opportunity to see it.

Yeah, so like I said, I have my copy in the first thing I was impressed with was that pages that once one thing triggered a question in my mind or maybe more comments. I believe there's a website where these things are housed in a zip code project standards plus. Or, oh, OK, yeah, I didn't know about this and I came upon it maybe six months ago, I was pretty impressed. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what?

There's a lot of rich resources. Yeah.

So so what we did is we created a new digital offering called Standards Plus. Right. So you have the PMBOK guide. The PMBOK guide is the standard. The digital offering is standards plus. And what it is, is a digital experience application where you go in and you can find use cases, tools, information all focused around the PMBOK. So it basically brings some of the information in the PMBOK guide to life in a digital form. And it will be something that we're constantly iterating and evolving and we're starting to include information there from all of our standards.

So whether it's program management, portfolio management, risk management and again, the idea is to put case studies, use cases and consumable bite size pieces of knowledge videos that people can use that again, make it a little more practical than what you might find in the PMBOK itself.

Sure. And just to be clear that for members only.

Yeah, that's right. So if you're a member, you get access. Not only do you get PMBOK guide as part of your membership. You also get access to Standards. Plus, we have another digital offering called Snippets, which again is bite sized project management content. And all of that comes with your your membership.

And I will say, like I said earlier, that there's a lot of rich material there. So for anyone on the line or listening to this, if you're a PMI member, make sure you check that out, because it's a place you want to bookmark and go back all the time. So switching to the the big certification, the PMP maybe tell us a little bit about you know, I know there's over a million PMP holders or PMP certified folks that there's a big certification for PMI.

But I also know this exam is changed, I think early this year. You know, with the PMBOK now, it's probably not so much focused on read the PMBOK, take the PMP, maybe give us your your your thoughts and comments on the PMP as it stands today.

Yeah, I'm really excited about this. We all are at PMI because, you know, for a number of years we've been getting a lot of feedback from the market that says, you know, you know, PMP needs to continue to evolve to consider the fact that the profession is changing. The way work's getting done is changing and so forth. And so the new the PMP that we released in January represents a new version, if you will. It's it's very much focused on not only traditional predictive waterfall approaches, but it's also 50 percent agile and hybrid content as well.

So an individual that is sitting for this exam is expected to to really understand a variety of approaches for delivering projects and programs. We also, again, moved away from a process oriented exam to one that's focused around understanding domains involving people. You know, how you lead people, how you work with people, collaborate with people. Process is obviously still part of it. And then also business environment. We want to make sure that properties have an understanding of how the macro trends that shape business, the the the importance of projects in a strategic context and how they can, you know, speak the language of executives to ensure that their projects are funded.

And there's a clear understanding of the return on investment. So since we released it in January, I think there's been more than 70 or 80 thousand people that have taken the new exam. Again, we're getting great, great responses from it. And it's been a it's been a good thing and it will continue to evolve. Now, the new exam I do want to mention this, the new exam uses a several dozen reference books. The PMBOK Guide 6th Edition is one of those reference books, as well as other books.

We actually list the reference books on our website as we evolve the exam and change. It will begin to incorporate some concepts from the seventh edition as well. But, Michael, you are absolutely right. The exam, the exam is not a book exam based on the pinback it is that PMBOK is one of many, many references. And remember, a lot of what we're testing is experienced in on the exam. So your experience managing and leading projects is critical to successfully passing that exam as well.

Sure, that's a great overview. That's I think a lot of people, even people where I work, the old thought, I took it in two thousand three, I think the old thought was read the PMBOK take the exams and things have evolved in a better way, I think. I think this is a better way to approach it, but it's good to get that information so people don't have a misnomer of, hey, I'm going to get the seventh edition, read that and I'm good to go.

Well, no look the reference materials, like you said. And they also just to clarify, the PMP, like a lot of things that the PMP is delivered online since covid. Right. That you can take that in an online environment. Is that true?

Yeah, you can, because when covid hit and all the all of the exam centers shut down, so we we needed to pivot quickly. So we now offer it both in an exam based testing environment as well as online proctor testing. So you can take it from home. I will say about 70 about sixty five percent of our candidates are opting for the online proctor testing because it's just much more convenient to do it from home. If you have a space, if you have a quiet space at home and you have a good connection and it's much more convenient to do from home and we're seeing that.

So that was a big change that we made. And it's really helping meet the needs of our candidates.

Well, that's great. And then the other the other two big certification, our program portfolio, so the PGMP and the PFMP, they both seem to be getting more people, taking it and getting more widely known. Any any thoughts on that? Things seem like they've been the same. They haven't changed lately. But, yeah, I assume still going to offer those and things will still move forward.

Yeah, we're going to continue to offer those. You're right. A very small volume there. I think in program management, there's maybe five, six, seven thousand people. What we've what we're doing with the program management professional cert is we're actually in the process of looking to reimagine that. We've done a lot of market research to understand what are people looking for in a high level certification like that. And we expect, I think by the end of the year, early next to come out with a new version of the PGMP that builds on the builds on the on the content that's already in there, but incorporate some some new components and elements that make it a little more conducive to people who are at that level and are looking for that type of cert.

I will say one of the one of our more popular certifications as a result of covid has been the risk management professional RMP fort for a long time. The RMP, the risk management professional, was just a small volume type of certification code that change code to change that. And we saw a huge spike in the number of people wanting to take the risk management professional cert. So we're going to continue to evolve that to make sure it addresses not only risk, but resiliency.

And a lot of lessons learned that came out of covid that organizations are looking for people to help them, you know, plan for that next big disruption. And so that's that's been a that's been a surprise to us coming out of covid.

So what are the schedule, there's this schedule and there's one other one.

Yeah, there's agile. Agile. Yeah. And then CAPM, which is the certified associate, that is more of an entry level professional certification. So if you don't have the years of experience managing and leading projects, that's what the PMP requires. You can get the first step, professional certification, which is CAPM. That is based on the PMBOK guide. Right. So that is understanding the language of project management, the the process, the principles, and then taking a test and getting that certification.

And it's a nice first step while you're gaining the experience you need for the PMP. And we continue to evolve the CAPM as well, where we're introducing more agile and hybrid knowledge into that exam as well. And we're also also looking for new ways to deliver it so that it can maybe be a modular based exam versus one exam you sit sit for. Maybe you can take it over a week or whatever, taking a few modules. So lots going on there.

But we are saying we have about 60 thousand CAPM and we are seeing more and more individuals again coming out of covid that are looking for certification as a way to differentiate themselves from others.

Well, I have to tell you, as I took my PGMP in 2008, I think I'm number 99. So, wow, I just had to read the Body of Knowledge and then just take it. I'm glad to see that going forward. And some changes made to it, to some good changes. And then I just got approved to take the form about a month and a half ago.

Oh, wow. Good good luck. That's that's a tough one.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I thought the PGMP was tough, so I'm sure PFMPas tough. But I like some of the changes that you made to that. Maybe pivoting a little bit. I know one thing that I've done is I take taken the hybrid pro and micro certification at PMI. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about what's going on there and what your thoughts are going for microcertifications, which I think is a great addition to the other certifications that you have.

Yeah, so micro-certifications is something that we've been, you know, moving forward with in a number of our new offerings, because we we know that what individuals know individuals don't have an unlimited amount of time. They have experience, they have knowledge. They're looking for some type of acknowledgment, certification to validate that they have an area of expertize and micro certifications allows us to do that. So for PMP's, particularly those PMP's that might have gotten their PMP five, 10 years ago, the agile hybrid micro certifications, an opportunity for someone to demonstrate their agile knowledge and get a certification, a micro certification from PMI doesn't require a whole lot of prep.

It's not expensive. But for someone that has that knowledge and wants to get recognition for it from PMI, they can take that micro certification. We also are have a number of other micro certifications, organization transformation, for example, that we know many, many project leaders and professionals are helping organizations lead and deliver transformation. So is there an opportunity, was there an opportunity for us to provide modeled after our bright line initiative, the PMI, a transformation course, or a series of courses that micro certs where a professional can demonstrate their expertize in transformation management and use that to to help further differentiate themselves in their organization?

So we we launched an organization transformation series of micro certs as well. And there's more. And I think you're going to see that because I think, generally speaking, micro certifications are very popular within within the professional development space. And we think we have a lot that we can offer there.

And I will add, taking the hybrid pro and the organizational transformation micro certs, it was straightforward, it was you did it all online, it was all from home, and it added to my body of knowledge, of my thinking without putting a ton of time into it. But I'll be honest, you have to you have to sit and absorb it and think about it. It wasn't just check the box.

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It's a little bit of work. I mean, it's done. It's done well. So and so. I think those are good things. And I know you're working on other micro certifications, but I think with covid in the online environment, I think those are really good additions for people to be focused on and take. So hats off to the people of PMI for putting that forward. Mike I've got a couple of more questions here, if I can. How can I as a member, get involved in future PMI efforts?

For example, there will be a pen by a point at some point. How can we as members participate in that type of work?

I love that question. Yeah, I mean, volunteerism is is a core value of PMI. We are always looking to engage the volunteer community to help us develop products and services. In fact, there's a number of things you can do. All these new products that I've been talking about all needed to be tested. We put out Alpha and beta and we're always going to our community asking them to test and give us feedback on these new offerings because we want to make sure that they meet the needs that you have.

So that's certainly one way that you can get involved. The PMBOK Guide 8th edition. When it comes time to do that, we put out a call for volunteers to to help support that effort. You could do a lot of different things. You could be on the committee that actually develops the standard writes the standard. You can contribute as a reviewer, you can contribute as a contributor of knowledge. There's a lot that we've had for for the seventh edition.

We had several thousand people contribute to developing that standard, either participating in workshops, providing content, reviewing content and so forth. So when when we do something like that, we normally put out a call. But the best way to get involved is connect with your local chapter because your chapters connected to everything that's going on at PMI. And not only that, your chapter have volunteer opportunities, but they can also give you information about how you might want to get involved at PMI Global if there's opportunities.

We have fourteen thousand volunteers. We always have volunteer opportunities. And but I think the best place to start is your chapter.

Oh, great, thank you. And then one other question here, are there any plans to establish partnership with Prosci for change management certification?

So I think we certainly know Prosci and we we've had numerous conversations with them because we think there's a natural alignment connection there. So part of our 4.0 strategy is looking for ways to partner with organizations, whether it's Prosci, whether it's CCL, the Center for Creative Leadership, whether it's AARP and others, PDMA Product Product Development Management Association. So we're talking to a lot of groups and we think that partnership is is the way that most organizations operate these days.

Co-opetition is a good thing, right? Instead of competition, it's how can you cooperate with one another and derive value out of a partnership? And that's what we're looking to do. So as soon as we have some of these partnerships solidified, we will certainly make it available to our community because we want to be able to bring you new and exciting content from the people that know how to know the information the best. Right. And and we know we can't do everything.

So we have to we have to do it through partnerships.

Great. Thank you so much. I think we're we're out of time. I'm going to leave a little time for any questions or anyone that wants to come off mute and ask any questions. We have had questions in the chat that we've already asked. But just to give anyone time here to ask, like anything else, is there any any other questions that people have?

A lot of great questions by the way

hearing and not seeing any Mike want to give you the opportunity to, is there anything else we missed? I think we covered a lot of ground and a lot of great content content. But is there anything else that you think you want to share on top of your mind?

No, we did we did cover a lot. I would encourage you to spend some time on our website, look around if you see things that are of interest to you, please try them out, let us know what you think if there's gaps. We also want to hear from you, too. And we're very much, very much connected to our community and really take your feedback seriously and use it to to improve the services and products that we have.

So we're open for that feedback. So that's that's all I would say there. But it's been great to have the opportunity to talk to you. And thank you, Michael and Joe, for for making it happen.

Yeah, no, thank you, Mike, and I appreciate your time and your insight, very interesting. I learned some more things, so that's always good. There is PMI is so big and there's so many things going on. You know, you need to be checking on the Web page and seeing what offerings are there because you're always trying new things out, what what works for people. And appreciate that if anyone online or anyone watching this recording has any questions or or thoughts, please get a hold of myself.

And if I need to get a hold of anyone at PMI, Mike or Daryn or anyone, we can do that. But, Mike, again, appreciate your time. I think this has been an awesome discussion, a lot of rich content. I hope people take advantage of it and do what they need to do to move their careers and their project management profession forward. But with that, I wish everyone a good day, evening, night, wherever you are and take care.

Yeah, thank you. Have a good day. All right.

Bye-bye, everyone.