What is the PMI Talent Triangle?

The PMI Talent Triangle is the framework PMI uses to sort professional development units (PDUs) into three skill areas. When you report education PDUs to maintain a certification, each one counts toward one of these areas.

The three areas

• Ways of Working: the technical side of delivering projects. Think predictive, agile, and hybrid approaches, estimation, scheduling, earned value, change control, and the tools and techniques you use to get work done.
• Power Skills: the people side. Communication, leadership, stakeholder engagement, collaboration, handling conflict, and building teams.
• Business Acumen: understanding the organization around the project. Strategy, finance and business terms, programs and portfolios, decision-making, and why projects succeed or fail in a business context.

How the courses here map to it

Each of the 23 free courses in the PDU catalog is tagged with exactly one area, shown on its course page and printed on its certificate:

• Ways of Working: 9 courses. See Which courses count toward Ways of Working?
• Power Skills: 10 courses. See Which courses count toward Power Skills?
• Business Acumen: 4 courses. See Which courses count toward Business Acumen?

All of them fall under PMI's Online or Digital Media category and are self-reported by you. Self Made PM is not a PMI Authorized Training Partner, and PMI does not pre-approve these courses.

How many PDUs you need in each area

PMI sets how many PDUs you need per cycle and how many must come from each area. Those rules differ by certification and can change, so check PMI's current CCR Handbook for the exact requirements that apply to you rather than relying on a number you read elsewhere.

A practical approach is to see which area you're short in and pick courses from that list. Credit for each course is based on your recorded learning time, not the listed value, so read How is PDU credit calculated for each course? before you plan around listed numbers.