PMI`s Communities of Practice

PMI‘s Communities of Practice
A short guidance
Introduction
The Project Management Institute (PMI) offers since a fairly
long time different online communities for registered
members of PMI. These so called Communities of Practice
(CoP) exist for many different industries like Aerospace and
Defense, IT and Telecom, Construction Industry or Energy-,
Oil-, Gas- and Petrochemical Industry. Beside from these
classic sectors of industry, there are also CoP available for
fields like Agile, Project Management Office or Global
Sustainability. All of them provide members of PMI an
interactive exchange of information.
Benefit
Basic principle is to meet online colleagues worldwide to
discuss ideas or to find support for challenging topics. There
are several tools like discussion forums, wikis, webinars or
blogs within each single CoP available to share information
and learn from each other. Thus one easily can share
common interest or questions distributed to worldwide
peers from many different sectors of industry.
Furthermore it is possible to gain meaningful information
with respect to events or volunteering jobs by what one
can get Professional Development Units (PDU). However
active participation like extending wikis or to lead an online
discussion within one of these CoP, offers as well an
opportunity to collect PDUs assiduously. As usual it is valid
to get 1 PDU for each spent hour of active contribution,
and it is effective for Category C (self directed learning).
Another way of collaboration is offered by the use of
webinars. In every single CoP there exist webinars related
to various topics. Usually a webinar’s duration is 1 or 2
hours and for sure one can also collect PDUs for active
participation. Again it is valid to report 1 PDU for each
spent hour on joining a webinar. In this case Category A
(courses offered by PMI’s R.E.P. etc.) is chosen to be correct.
If you ever wish to leave a CoP, go to your personal PMI
view (myPMI) and choose “Communities” from the menu.
You get a clear view about all CoP where you are registered
for. To sign off again, just press “Remove” from the relative
CoP and your registration is gone.
You will find all used links from this article again in the
Reference section.
Conclusion
In comparison to other public communities in the World
Wide Web, PMI’s CoP are only accessible to fully registered
members. Therefore a high level of quality is given to the
provided information inside. This is a basic principle to get
useful support from other peers to open questions.
References
[1] Main overview about all Communities of Practice
(CoP)
http://www.pmi.org/Get-Involved/Communities-ofPractice.aspx
[2] Complete CoP registration: “Click Subscribe to be
included in the Member Directory and receive the
community newsletter. Learn more about subscription”
[3] Overview about latest news from all CoP
http://www.pmi.org/Get-Involved/Communities-ofPractice/Knowledge-Cafe.aspx
[4] Personal overview about all acitve CoP
https://my.pmi.org/communities
About the Author
Gerald Derflinger, PMP is working as an Engineering
Project Leader within Semiconductor Industry and is
leading Software/Hardware development projects.
Application
A valid membership at PMI is required to join any CoP.
Once you have logged in to PMI’s homepage, you go to the
main overview about all existing CoP [1]. When you have
decided to join one of them you first of all choose the
caption of the relative CoP. Thereupon you immediately
are going to be forwarded to the chosen CoP website. To
complete the registration you just have to confirm the
appeared advice on top of the CoP website, below the main
menu, by pushing “Subscribe” [2].
Afterwards all relevant information and of course
functionality from your chosen CoP is fully available. One
can start promptly with joining actively online discussions
and blogs or with participating webinars to share
knowledge with worldwide colleagues.
To get a quick overview about latest CoP news and
upcoming activities like webinars or events, following link is
recommended [3].
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