1
Introduction
KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS LEVEL
The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Exam is based on the Agile topics that are essential for the Agile professionals to master. For the purpose of the exam and also to grasp the concepts of the Agile framework, it is necessary to know the exam structure and contents very well. In this chapter, we will discuss the exam structure, content, and how this book has covered all the topics suggested by PMI.
CONTENTS OF THE EXAM
PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Exam is based on the Agile topics which are essential for the Agile professionals to master. for the purpose of the exam and also to grasp the concepts of the Agile framework it is necessary to know the exam structure and contents very well. In this chapter, we will discuss the Exam structure, content and how this book has covered all the topics suggested by PMI.
The web site of project management institute, www.pmi.org, contains the ‘PMI-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) Examination Content Outline’ which describes the topics covered in the exam.
The exam has 120 multiple-choice questions. Only 100 questions will be evaluated for scoring purpose. The remaining 20 are pre-test questions that will be randomly distributed in the question paper.
The exam gives equal importance to the Agile tools and techniques and the Agile knowledge and skills.
The exam content is distributed across seven domains. The tasks performed by an Agile practitioner are grouped under these domains. For the exam, it is very important to understand the domains, sub-domains and the tasks within each of them. The table below gives the indicative percentage of questions from each of these domains.
Domains and Tasks
| Domain | Percentage of Items on |
|---|---|
| Domain I. Agile Principles and Mindset | 16% |
| Domain II. Value-Driven Delivery | 20% |
| Domain III. Stakeholder Engagement | 17% |
| Domain IV. Team Performance | 16% |
| Domain V. Adaptive Planning | 12% |
| Domain VI. Problem Detection and Resolution | 10% |
| Domain VII. Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, and People) | 9% |
| Domain I Agile Principles and Mindset | |
| Task 1 | Advocate for agile principles by modeling those principles and discussing agile values in order to develop a shared mindset across the team as well as between the customer and the team. |
| Task 2 | Help ensure that everyone has a common understanding of the values and principles of agile and a common knowledge around the agile practices and terminology being used in order to work effectively. |
| Task 3 | Support change at the system or organization level by educating the organization and influencing processes, behaviors, and people in order to make the organization more effective and efficient. |
| Task 4 | Practice visualization by maintaining highly visible information radiators showing real progress and real team performance in order to enhance transparency and trust. |
| Task 5 | Contribute to a safe and trustful team environment by allowing everyone to experiment and make mistakes so that each can learn and continuously improve the way he or she works. |
| Task 6 | Enhance creativity by experimenting with new techniques and process ideas in order to discover more efficient and effective ways of working. |
| Task 7 | Encourage team members to share knowledge by collaborating and working together in order to lower risks around knowledge silos and reduce bottlenecks. |
| Task 8 | Encourage emergent leadership within the team by establishing a safe and respectful environment in which new approaches can be tried in order to make improvements and foster self-organization and empowerment. |
| Task 9 | Practice servant leadership by supporting and encouraging others in their endeavors so that they can perform at their highest level and continue to improve. |
| Domain VI Problem Detection and Resolution | |
| Task 1 | Create an open and safe environment by encouraging conversation and experimentation in order to surface problems and impediments that are slowing the team down or preventing its ability to deliver value. |
| Task 2 | Identify threats and issues by educating and engaging the team at various points in the project in order to resolve them at the appropriate time and improve processes that cause issues. |
| Task 3 | Ensure issues are resolved by appropriate team members and/or reset expectations in light of issues that cannot be resolved in order to maximize the value delivered. |
| Task 4 | Maintain a visible, monitored, and prioritized list of threats and issues in order to elevate accountability, encourage action, and track ownership and resolution status. |
| Task 5 | Communicate status of threats and issues by maintaining a threat list and incorporating activities into the backlog of work in order to provide transparency. |
| Domain VII Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, and People) |
|
| Task 1 | Tailor and adapt the project process by periodically reviewing and integrating team practices, organizational culture, and delivery goals in order to ensure team effectiveness within established organizational guidelines and norms. |
| Task 2 | Improve team processes by conducting frequent retrospectives and improvement experiments in order to continually enhance the effectiveness of the team, project, and organization. |
| Task 3 | Seek feedback on the product by incremental delivery and frequent demonstrations in order to improve the value of the product. |
| Task 4 | Create an environment of continued learning by providing opportunities for people to develop their skills in order to develop a more productive team of generalizing specialists. |
| Task 5 | Challenge existing process elements by performing a value stream analysis and removing waste in order to increase individual efficiency and team effectiveness. |
| Task 6 | Create systemic improvements by disseminating knowledge and practices across projects and organizational boundaries in order to avoid re-occurrence of identified problems and improve the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. |
It is important to understand the areas that PMI intend to cover in both Tools and Techniques and Knowledge and Skills required in Agile projects. Below you will find the list of topics that PMI provides as the guideline for these areas but at the same time the list is not intended to be exhaustive, but is more of indicative in nature.
TOOLS AND TECHNIQUES
| Area | Focus | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | Communications | Information Radiator, Team Space, Agile Tooling, Osmotic Communications for collocated and distributed teams, two-way communication (trustworthy, conversation driven), Social media-based communication, active listening, brainstorming, feedback methods |
| 2. | Planning, Monitoring, and Adopting | Reviews, Kanban board, task board, Time Boxing, Iteration and Release Planning, Variance and trend analysis, WIP Limits, Daily stand ups, Burn down/up Charts, Cumulative Flow Diagrams, product-feedback loop |
| 3. | Agile Estimation | Relative Sizing/Story Points/T-shirt sizing, Wide Band Delphi, Planning Poker, Affinity Estimation, Ideal Time |
| 4. | Agile Analysis and Design | Product Roadmap, User Stories/backlog, Story Maps, Progressive Elaborations, Wire Frames, Chartering, Personas, Agile Modeling, workshops, learning cycle, collaboration games |
| 5. | Product Quality | Frequent Verification and Validation, testing, including exploratory and usability Definition of Done, Continuous Integration |
| 6. | Interpersonal skills | Emotional Intelligence, Collaboration, Adaptive Leadership, Negotiation, Conflict Resolution, Servant Leadership |
| 7. | Value-Based Prioritization | ROI, NPV, IRR, Compliance, customer valued, Prioritization, Relative prioritization/Rankings, requirements reviews, minimal viable product (MVP) MMF MoSCoW, Kano analysis |
| 8. | Risk Management | Risk Adjusted Backlog, Risk Burn-Down Graph, Risk-Based Spike, architectural spike |
| 9. | Metrics | Velocity/throughput/productivity, Cycle time, Lead time, Earned Value management, Defects rate, approved iteration, work in progress |
| 10. | Process Improvement | Kaizen, the Five WHYs, retrospectives, introspectives, process tailoring/hybrid models, control limits, pre-mortem (rule setting, failure analysis), fishbone diagram analysis, Value Stream Mapping |
AGILE KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS
Each Knowledge and Skill mentioned below are important from exam perspective and should be understood clearly.
- Agile values and principles
- Agile frameworks and terminology
- Agile methods and approaches
- Assessing and incorporating community and stakeholder values
- Stakeholder management
- Communication management
- Facilitation methods
- Knowledge sharing/written communication
- Leadership
- Building agile teams
- Team motivation
- Physical and virtual co-location
- Global, cultural, and team diversity
- Training, coaching, and mentoring
- Developmental mastery models (for example, Tuckman, Dreyfus, Shu Ha Ri)
- Self-assessment tools and techniques
- Participatory decision models (for example, convergent, shared collaboration)
- Principles of systems thinking (for example, complex adaptive, chaos)
- Problem solving
- Prioritization
- Incremental delivery
- Agile discovery
- Agile sizing and estimation
- Value based analysis and decomposition
- Process analysis
- Continuous improvement
- Agile hybrid models
- Managing with agile KPIs
- Agile project chartering
- Agile contracting
- Agile project accounting principles
- Regulatory compliance
- PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct
CHAPTER-WISE COVERAGE OF EXAM CONTENT
This book is organized in a fashion that each and every Domain along with the Tools and Techniques and Knowledge and Skills mentioned in PMI guidelines are covered. Below is the mapping of the topics in each chapter of the book that will help you find out which Tools and Knowledge areas are covered in what chapter.
Domains and Tasks
| Domain I Agile Principles and Mindset | Covered in Chapter | |
| Task 1 | Advocate for agile principles by modeling those principles and discussing agile values in order to develop a shared mindset across the team as well as between the customer and the team. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 2 | Help ensure that everyone has a common understanding of the values and principles of agile and a common knowledge around the agile practices and terminology being used in order to work effectively. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 3 | Support change at the system or organization level by educating the organization and influencing processes, behaviors, and people in order to make the organization more effective and efficient. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 4 | Practice visualization by maintaining highly visible information radiators showing real progress and real team performance in order to enhance transparency and trust. | Chapter 5 |
| Task 5 | Contribute to a safe and trustful team environment by allowing everyone to experiment and make mistakes so that each can learn and continuously improve the way he or she works. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 6 | Enhance creativity by experimenting with new techniques and process ideas in order to discover more efficient and effective ways of working. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 7 | Encourage team members to share knowledge by collaborating and working together in order to lower risks around knowledge silos and reduce bottlenecks. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 8 | Encourage emergent leadership within the team by establishing a safe and respectful environment in which new approaches can be tried in order to make improvements and foster self-organization and empowerment. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 9 | Practice servant leadership by supporting and encouraging others in their endeavors so that they can perform at their highest level and continue to improve. | Chapter 9 |
| Domain II Value-Driven Delivery | ||
| Define Positive Value | ||
| Task 1 | Define deliverables by identifying units that can be produced incrementally in order to maximize their value to stakeholders while minimizing non-value-added work. | Chapter 10 |
| Task 2 | Refine requirements by gaining consensus on the acceptance criteria for features on a just-in-time basis in order to deliver value. | Chapter 8 |
| Task 3 | Select and tailor the team’s process based on project and organizational characteristics as well as team experience in order to optimize value delivery. | Chapter 8 |
| Avoid Potential Downsides | ||
| Task 4 | Plan for small releasable increments by organizing requirements into minimally marketable features/minimally viable products in order to allow for the early recognition and delivery of value. | Chapter 11 |
| Task 5 | Limit increment size and increase review frequency with appropriate stakeholders in order to identify and respond to risks early on and at minimal cost. | Chapter 5 |
| Task 6 | Solicit customer and user feedback by reviewing increments often in order to confirm and enhance business value. | Chapter 8 |
| Prioritization | ||
| Task 7 | Prioritize the units of work through collaboration with stakeholders in order to optimize the value of the deliverables. | Chapter 10 |
| Task 8 | Perform frequent review and maintenance of the work results by prioritizing and maintaining internal quality in order to reduce the overall cost of incremental development. | Chapter 10 |
| Task 9 | Continuously identify and prioritize the environmental, operational, and infrastructure factors in order to improve the quality and value of the deliverables. | Chapter 7 |
| Incremental Development | ||
| Task 10 | Conduct operational reviews and/or periodic checkpoints with stakeholders in order to obtain feedback and corrections to the work in progress and planned work. | Chapter 10 |
| Task 11 | Balance development of deliverable units and risk reduction efforts by incorporating both value-producing and risk-reducing work into the backlog in order to maximize the total value proposition over time. | Chapter 5 |
| Task 12 | Re-prioritize requirements periodically in order to reflect changes in the environment and stakeholder needs or preferences in order to maximize the value. | Chapter 8 |
| Task 13 | Elicit and prioritize relevant non-functional requirements (such as operations and security) by considering the environment in which the solution will be used in order to minimize the probability of failure. | Chapter 5 |
| Task 14 | Conduct frequent reviews of work products by performing inspections, reviews, and/or testing in order to identify and incorporate improvements into the overall process and product/service. | Chapter 8 |
| Domain III Stakeholder Engagement | ||
| Understand Stakeholder Needs | ||
| Task 1 | Identify and engage effective and empowered business stakeholder(s) through periodic reviews in order to ensure that the team is knowledgeable about stakeholders’ interests, needs, and expectations. | Chapter 2 |
| Task 2 | Identify and engage all stakeholders (current and future) by promoting knowledge sharing early and throughout the project to ensure the unimpeded flow of information and value throughout the lifespan of the project. | Chapter 2 |
| Ensure Stakeholder Involvement | ||
| Task 3 | Establish stakeholder relationships by forming a working agreement among key stakeholders in order to promote participation and effective collaboration. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 4 | Maintain proper stakeholder involvement by continually assessing changes in the project and organization in order to ensure that new stakeholders are appropriately engaged. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 5 | Establish collaborative behaviors among the members of the organization by fostering group decision making and conflict resolution in order to improve decision quality and reduce the time required to make decisions. | Chapter 4 |
| Manage Stakeholder Expectations | ||
| Task 6 | Establish a shared vision of the various project increments (products, deliverables, releases, and iterations) by developing a high-level vision and supporting objectives in order to align stakeholders’ expectations and build trust. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 7 | Establish and maintain a shared understanding of success criteria, deliverables, and acceptable trade-offs by facilitating awareness among stakeholders in order to align expectations and build trust. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 8 | Provide transparency regarding work status by communicating team progress, work quality, impediments, and risks in order to help the primary stakeholders make informed decisions. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 9 | Provide forecasts at a level of detail that balances the need for certainty and the benefits of adaptability in order to allow stakeholders to plan effectively. | Chapter 4 |
| Domain IV Team Performance | ||
| Team Formation | ||
| Task 1 | Cooperate with the other team members to devise ground rules and internal processes in order to foster team coherence and strengthen team members’ commitment to shared outcomes. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 2 | Help create a team that has the interpersonal and technical skills needed to achieve all known project objectives in order to create business value with minimal delay. | Chapter 9 |
| Team Empowerment | ||
| Task 3 | Encourage team members to become generalizing specialists in order to reduce team size and bottlenecks, and to create a high-performing cross-functional team. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 4 | Contribute to self-organizing the work by empowering others and encouraging emerging leadership in order to produce effective solutions and manage complexity. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 5 | Continuously discover team and personal motivators and demotivators in order to ensure that team morale is high and team members are motivated and productive throughout the project. | Chapter 9 |
| Team Collaboration and Commitment | ||
| Task 6 | Facilitate close communication within the team and with appropriate external stakeholders through co-location or the use of collaboration tools in order to reduce miscommunication and rework. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 7 | Reduce distractions in order to establish a predictable outcome and optimize the value delivered. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 8 | Participate in aligning project and team goals by sharing project vision in order to ensure that the team understands how their objectives fit into the overall goals of the project. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 9 | Encourage the team to measure its velocity by tracking and measuring actual performance in previous iterations or releases in order for members to gain a better understanding of their capacity and create more accurate forecasts. | Chapter 5 |
| Domain V Adaptive Planning | ||
| Levels of Planning | ||
| Task 1 | Plan at multiple levels (strategic, release, iteration, and daily) creating appropriate detail by using rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration to balance predictability of outcomes with the ability to exploit opportunities. | Chapter 5 |
| Task 2 | Make planning activities visible and transparent by encouraging participation of key stakeholders and publishing planning results in order to increase commitment level and reduce uncertainty. | Chapter 6 |
| Task 3 | As the project unfolds, set and manage stakeholder expectations by making increasingly specific levels of commitments in order to ensure a common understanding of the expected deliverables. *** |
Chapter 5 |
| Adaptation | ||
| Task 4 | Adapt the cadence and the planning process based on results of periodic retrospectives about characteristics and/or the size/complexity/criticality of the project deliverables in order to maximize the value. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 5 | Inspect and adapt the project plan to reflect changes in requirements, schedule, budget, and shifting priorities based on team learning, delivery experience, stakeholder feedback, and defects in order to maximize business value delivered. | Chapter 10 |
| Agile Sizing and Estimation | ||
| Task 6 | Size items by using progressive elaboration techniques in order to determine likely project size independent of team velocity and external variables. | Chapter 6 |
| Task 7 | Adjust capacity by incorporating maintenance and operations demands and other factors in order to create or update the range estimate. | Chapter 6 |
| Task 8 | Create an initial scope, schedule, and cost range estimates that reflect a current high-level understanding of the effort necessary to deliver the project in order to develop a starting point for managing the project. | Chapter 6 |
| Task 9 | Refine scope, schedule, and cost range estimates that reflect the latest understanding of the effort necessary to deliver the project in order to manage the project. | Chapter 6 |
| Task 10 | Continuously use data from changes in resource capacity, project size, and velocity metrics in order to evaluate the estimate to complete. | Chapter 6 |
| Domain VI Problem Detection and Resolution | ||
| Task 1 | Create an open and safe environment by encouraging conversation and experimentation in order to surface problems and impediments that are slowing the team down or preventing its ability to deliver value. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 2 | Identify threats and issues by educating and engaging the team at various points in the project in order to resolve them at the appropriate time and improve processes that cause issues. | Chapter 11 |
| Task 3 | Ensure issues are resolved by appropriate team members and/or reset expectations in light of issues that cannot be resolved in order to maximize the value delivered. | Chapter 11 |
| Task 4 | Maintain a visible, monitored, and prioritized list of threats and issues in order to elevate accountability, encourage action, and track ownership and resolution status. | Chapter 11 |
| Task 5 | Communicate status of threats and issues by maintaining a threat list and incorporating activities into the backlog of work in order to provide transparency. | Chapter 11 |
| Domain VII Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, and People) |
||
| Task 1 | Tailor and adapt the project process by periodically reviewing and integrating team practices, organizational culture, and delivery goals in order to ensure team effectiveness within established organizational guidelines and norms. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 2 | Improve team processes by conducting frequent retrospectives and improvement experiments in order to continually enhance the effectiveness of the team, project, and organization. | Chapter 8 |
| Task 3 | Seek feedback on the product by incremental delivery and frequent demonstrations in order to improve the value of the product. | Chapter 4 |
| Task 4 | Create an environment of continued learning by providing opportunities for people to develop their skills in order to develop a more productive team of generalizing specialists. | Chapter 9 |
| Task 5 | Challenge existing process elements by performing a value stream analysis and removing waste in order to increase individual efficiency and team effectiveness. | Chapter 8 |
| Task 6 | Create systemic improvements by disseminating knowledge and practices across projects and organizational boundaries in order to avoid re-occurrence of identified problems and improve the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. | Chapter 8 |
Tools and Techniques
| Area | Focus (Tools and Techniques) |
Covered in chapter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Communications | Information radiator Team space Agile tooling Osmotic communications for co-located and/or distributed teams Two-way communications (trustworthy, conversation driven) Social media-based communication Active listening Feedback methods Brainstorming |
Chapter 4 Chapter 9 |
| 2. | Planning, Monitoring, and Adopting | Reviews Kanban board Task board Timeboxing Iteration and release planning Variance and trend analysis WIP limits Daily stand ups Burn down/up charts Cumulative flow diagrams Backlog grooming/refinement Product-feedback loop |
Chapter 5 |
| 3. | Agile Estimation | Relative sizing/story points/T-shirt sizing Wide band Delphi/planning poker Affinity estimating Ideal time |
Chapter 6 |
| 4. | Agile Analysis and Design | Product roadmap User stories/backlog Story maps Progressive Elaboration Wireframes Chartering Personas Agile modeling Workshops Learning cycle Collaboration games |
Chapter 7 |
| 5. | Product Quality | Frequent verification and validation Definition of done Continuous integration testing, including exploratory and usability |
Chapter 8 |
| 6. | Interpersonal Skills | Emotional intelligence Collaboration Adaptive leadership Conflict resolution Servant leadership negotiation |
Chapter 9 |
| 7. | Value-based Prioritization | ROI/NPV/IRR Compliance Customer-valued prioritization Requirements reviews Minimal viable product (MVP) Minimal marketable feature (MMF) Relative prioritization/ranking MoSCoW Kano analysis |
Chapter 10 |
| 8. | Risk Management | Risk-adjusted backlog Risk burn down graphs Risk-based spike Architectural spike |
Chapter 11 |
| 9. | Metrics | Velocity/throughput/productivity Cycle time Lead time EVM for agile projects Defects rate Approved iterations Work in progress |
Chapter 6 |
| 10. | Process Improvement | Kaizen The Five WHYs Retrospectives introspectives Process tailoring/hybrid models Value stream mapping Control limits Pre-mortem (rule setting, failure analysis) Fishbone diagram analysis |
Chapter 8 |
Knowledge and Skills
| Knowledge and Skills | Covered in Chapter |
|---|---|
| • Agile values and principles | Chapter 2 |
| • Agile frameworks and terminology | Chapter 2 |
| • Agile methods and approaches | Chapter 2 |
| • Assessing and incorporating community and stakeholder values | Chapter 4 |
| • Stakeholder management | Chapter 4 |
| • Communication management | Chapter 4 |
| • Facilitation methods | Chapter 9 |
| • Knowledge sharing/written communication | Chapter 9 |
| • Leadership | Chapter 9 |
| • Building agile teams | Chapter 9 |
| • Team motivation | Chapter 9 |
| • Physical and virtual co-location | Chapter 4 |
| • Global, cultural, and team diversity | Chapter 9 |
| • Training, coaching, and mentoring | Chapter 9 |
| • Developmental mastery models (for example, Tuckman, Dreyfus, Shu Ha Ri) | Chapter 9 |
| • Self-assessment tools and techniques | Chapter 8 |
| • Participatory decision models (for example, convergent, shared collaboration | Chapter 7 |
| • Principles of systems thinking (for example, complex adaptive, chaos) | Chapter 9 |
| • Problem solving | Chapter 9 |
| • Prioritization | Chapter 10 |
| • Incremental delivery | Chapter 2 |
| • Agile discovery | Chapter 11 |
| • Agile sizing and estimation | Chapter 6 |
| • Value based analysis and decomposition | Chapter 10 |
| • Process analysis | Chapter 8 |
| • Continuous improvement | Chapter 8 |
| • Agile hybrid models | Chapter 3 |
| • Managing with agile KPIs | Chapter 6 |
| • Agile project chartering | Chapter 2 |
| • Agile contracting | Chapter 5 |
| • Agile project accounting principles | Chapter 5 |
| • Regulatory compliance | Chapter 10 |
| • PMI’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct | Chapter 12 |
EIGHT STEPS FOR PMI-ACP® EXAM PREPARATION
We strongly recommend the following eight-steps process for passing the PMI-ACP exam.
Step 1—PMI Membership and Benefits
- Reconfirm the need to become a PMI-ACP
- If yes, become a PMI member by making a simple online enrollment at www.pmi.org
- PMI membership is not mandatory for the PMI-ACP certification, but recommended. You get a CD-ROM of PMBOK latest version + monthly magazine—PM Network, a quarterly research journal and monthly newsletter (for a year) + discounts on PMI books.
- Membership is annual ($129 for the initial membership and $119 for renewals).
- We get $60 benefit (discount) while applying for PMI-ACP exam if you are a PMI member.
- Keep the e-receipt for reimbursement purpose, if any.
Step 2—Mandatory Training/Agile PM Education
- It is mandatory to have 21 hours of Agile project management training.
- You can attend classroom training or complete 21 hours through e-learning offered by various education providers.
- While submitting the application kit for PMI-ACP exam, the details of this training are to be furnished.
- It is better to get this training through registered education provider (REP) of PMI.
Step 3—Submit PMI-ACP Examination Application
- Fill up the details in the online application for examination, which includes your education, experience and training.
- PMI membership ID
- A detailed split-up for the 2000 hours of general project management experience project-wise (name of the project, reporting line, brief description and hours split up according to initiation/planning/execution/controlling and closure). These 2000 hours should be from the last five years of experience
- 1500 hours of experience working in Agile project team/Agile methodologies. These 1500 hours should be earned from the last two years of experience, over and above 2000 hours of general project management experience described above.
- You can save the information and also continue later
- After submission, you will get acknowledgment through e-mail
Step 4—Receipt of PMI-ACP Examination Eligibility Letter from PMI
- After submitting the application, within a week, you will get the eligibility letter through e-mail.
- This eligibility letter is valid for one year, and within one year you need to pay the examination fees.
- After getting the eligibility letter, you need to submit the credit card details for PMI-ACP exam fees.
- The application fee is $435 for a PMI member and $495 for a non-PMI member.
- Keep the e-receipt for reimbursement purpose.
- After submitting the credit card details you can take the examination.
Step 5—Prepare for the Exam
- Key step: requires investing substantial quality TIME.
- Prepare systematically through various references.
- The main focus should be on PMI-Agile exam content outline, with supporting information from other references.
- Map with real-life experiences while reading.
Step 6—Contact the Local Pro-metric center and Fix Up the Examination Date
- Once confident of taking up the examination, contact the nearest pro-metric center and fix up an appointment for the examination (10–15 days in advance).
Step 7—Attend PMI-ACP Revision Classes
A lot of education providers conduct one-day crash courses for PMI-ACP revision. Try to attend this as it will be helpful for you to pass the exam and also boost your confidence level to appear for the exam.
Step 8—Execute, Succeed and Celebrate
RELAX! You have full 180 minutes to answer 120 questions. You have plenty of time. Certification documentation will be sent to you within 3–4 weeks of passing the exam. Enjoy the benefits of PMI-ACP.
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR PMI-ACP® EXAM
Preparing for the Exam
- Take at least three months for the whole preparation. Do not try to attempt the exam without preparation.
- Lock and freeze your exam date well in advance (at least three months before). We can prepare seriously only when the exam date is out (Habit from college days!). The preferable exam dates may not be available as there is always a huge demand for PMI exam.
- Read the PMBOK Guide at least once to understand the traditional project management concepts because PMBOK is aligned with Agile certification. Read the introductory chapters of this book to understand this relation better.
- Order the domain as per your interest…. For example, (1) Stakeholder engagement (2) Value-driven delivery, etc.
- For each domain areas, practice as many questions as possible before going to the next domain. (This will definitely increase confidence in that particular domain). Practice the questions from the exam viewpoint rather than just reading the questions and answers.
- Take at least one week to study each domain along with practicing questions.
- Even if you take one week for each domain, you can finish your preparation in six weeks (two months approximately). Another one month for revision and going through the full question papers.
- Create a study note for yourself in each domain, which will be helpful for you to revise during the exam period.
- Remember your own success formula from your past academic successes and try to follow a similar study pattern.
- Be aware of tools and techniques. 50% of the exam is based on tools and techniques. Remaining 50% is based on knowledge and skills required to execute Agile projects.
- Don’t try to memorize anything as it will not be helpful. Try to understand the concepts well.
The content of the PMI ACP Examination and the coverage of the same in this book are discussed in Chapter 1.
Exam Pattern
- The Exam has 120 multiple choice questions, each having only four choices.
- Total examination time is three hours (180 minutes).
- None of the above, all of the above, choices may not usually be there.
- You can expect some TRUE/FALSE type of questions.
- READ the questions fully before trying to answer.
- There are no negative marks for wrong answers, so, do not leave any question unanswered.
- You can see only one question on the screen at a time. You can answer a question and/or mark it for later review. You can move back and forth through the questions at any point of time before submission.
- This exam not only tests the knowledge you have but also the application of knowledge. You must understand how the various terminologies used in this book are used in the real world.
- You need to understand and answer each question based on the PMI viewpoint and not on what your company/you follow.
- Understand risk calculations (using decision trees, expected monetary value, etc.) and categories of risk.
- Concentrate more on questions with often, but not always, key words such as Except, Not, At Least, At the Most, Not True, Not False, Except.
- You need not use all the information provided in the question to answer.
- You need to select the answer which is close to a given situation.
- Answer the questions based on the PMI concepts first, and then consider your own experience.
Types of Questions in the Exam
Try to understand and be prepared for the following patterns of questions.
1. Straight from PMI-Agile Certification Content
Usually, there will be a few questions in this pattern where the questions and answers will be straight from the latest edition of Agile exam content outline. For example:
Question: All of the followings are major Agile domain practice prescribed by PMI except:
- Value-driven delivery
- Boosting project performance practices
- Adaptive planning
- Problem detection and resolution
Answer: B
2. Situational Questions
Most of the questions are expected to be in this pattern, where a situation will be described to give context to the problem. Based on the situation, we need to choose the best answer.
Question: You are working in a training organization and the proposal which you submitted two months back to start and conduct a new course to increase the revenue got approved. This is an example of which of the following?
- Strategic Opportunity
- Customer Request
- Legal Requirement
- Employee Request
Answer: A
3. Questions with Unnecessary Information
Not all information included in a question will be used to answer the question. Sometimes, there will be multiple paragraphs of information for each question on the exam.
Question: You are discussing with another project manager who is also preparing for PMI-Agile exam and there were arguments about the number of domains and major tools, techniques discussed by PMI. Which of the following is TRUE?
- 4 domains and 12 major tools and techniques
- 6 domains and 6 major tools and techniques
- 4 domains and 10 major tools and techniques
- 6 domains and 10 major tools and techniques
Answer: D
The exam will have a lot of questions like this and you need to aware of these type.
4. TRUE/FALSE Questions
Question: You are a program manager in discussion with another program manager. You generally discuss project and program relationship. He is telling that if a relationship between projects is only that of a shared client or services, the efforts should be managed as a portfolio of projects rather than as a program. Is it true?
- True
- False
Answer: A
Program management focuses on project interdependencies and helps to determine the optimum approach to managing the projects.
One Day Before the Exam
- Know the route for the exam center clearly; if possible, try to visit it.
- Go to bed early (Before 9:30 pm)
- Don’t eat oily foods the day before the exam, don’t eat heavy food.
- Don’t drink alcohol the day before as it may reduce your concentration.
- Relax a lot the day before the exam.
- Re-visit your exam notes in all the knowledge areas.
- Visualize success of the next day.
In the Exam Hall
- Go to the exam hall at least one hour in advance.
- Carry some snacks, if possible, as it may stop hunger pangs at the end of the exam.
- Report your presence to the coordinator immediately and do not wait to be called.
- You must bring your authorization letter from the PMI, as well as two forms of ID with exactly the same name you entered on the exam application.
- Relax and be cool in the exam hall.
- Do not get tensed with the surroundings as there will be people who write other types of exams.
- Last minute preparation may be not helpful in this exam.
- You will need only two hours to finish the PMI-ACP exam. Take the remaining time for review.
- Do not spend more than two minutes on the same question, just leave it for review and move ahead. You can come back and review these questions later.
- Do not expect to answer all the questions, there may be some questions that you have not heard of, or for which you may not know the answers. Do not worry about this kind of questions, leave it for review and move ahead.
- Follow time management strictly in the exam hall. You should have crossed 40 questions in the first hour and next 40 questions in the second hour. If you have completed anything less than this, try to speed up immediately and you need to use this as a speed indicator.
- Control your anger, energy level, frustrations in the exam as you may not like some of the questions and may not agree with some of the questions and answers. Don’t worry; you need to just move ahead with the exam.
- You need to keep your energy level up always, from the beginning until the end. Try to take a five-minute break in between, possibly at the end of 1.5 hours to refresh yourself.
- Read all the four answers completely before picking up the correct answer. Practice this from the beginning of your preparation. It is better to read the answers backward (choice D first, then C, etc.) as this will be helpful to pick the right answer easily.
- If you do not know the answers correctly try to use elimination method. Eliminate the answers which you are sure is not the correct answer.
- Try to find out common project management errors in the answers, which may be useful for the elimination purpose.
- Look for words like ‘next,’ ‘best,’ ‘never,’ ‘most,’ ‘always,’ ‘except,’ ‘most likely,’ ‘less likely,’ etc. Take note of these words, and try to understand the real meaning of the questions using ‘the keywords’ above.
- Sometimes two negative keywords will be given in the same question and you need to rephrase the question before answering it, otherwise the answer may go wrong. For example, “which of the following is not true” should be rephrased as “which of the following is false” before answering the question.
- Understand the Agile project management concepts in real-world application before selecting the answers.
- If you find more than one answer for any of the question, then try to choose the best answer out of these.
- When you answer “fill in the blank” type of questions, the correct answer may not be grammatically correct.
- When you are marking any question for review due to confusion in choosing the answers, just note in the paper given, the possible answers according to you. When you review you can straight away choose among the marked one- and also save time reading the other answers.
- The exam will not be scored until you indicate that you are ready, or the 3-hour time allotted is over (There will be clock tickling at the top right hand corner of the screen indicating the remaining time).
- Don’t try to click the finish button without answering all the questions. Even you do not know the correct answer in spite of applying all the logic, choose the best option you feel as it may go right and cost you nothing!!
- A printed summary of test results will be given immediately after the exam.
Common Things an Agile Practitioner Should Know
Agile project managers are generally expected to know the following terminologies and concepts. Understand these as it will be helpful for you to answer the questions in PMI-ACP exam.
- Deliver working software frequently
- Facilitate the team to solve their impediments
- Meetings expected to happen only with agenda
- Only relevant topics should be discussed in the meeting
- Agenda for the meeting should be set well in advance
- The team should be consulted in the planning
- Agile team should be empowered to take decisions