New to the Third Edition

This third edition of the book, in keeping with the trend set by the earlier two editions, continues to focus on real-life situations and endeavours to hone the skills of those who aspire to crack the Project Management Institute (PMI) certification examination.

The first and second editions of the book were designed in accordance with the syllabus of the first version of the exam. With PMI rolling out its revised examination pattern in 2015 with changed syllabus and question structure, it necessitated a modification in the book’s contents to suit the new curriculum and exam pattern. The current edition captures the defining features of the changed question pattern and maps the book’s contents directly to the PMI ACP syllabus topics for the reader’s benefit.

In addition, the contents of the book’s second edition have been enhanced on the following fronts:

• Chapter coverage: Chapter 1—Introduction gives a direct mapping of all Knowledge and Skills and Tools and Techniques mentioned in the PMI ACP course content. The details of PMI ACP exam process starting from preparation to filling up the form and guidance for requirements of making payment are provided in this chapter.
• Added topics: All topics newly added to the syllabus are added in relevant chapters. The Q&A section at the end of each chapter is augmented with new questions on these topics. In-depth discussions have been included on topics like XP, Lean, VSM, user stories, relative sizing, requirement management and estimation topics to match with the depth of knowledge now expected in the exam.
• More diagrams: A picture speaks a thousand words. To make complex concepts clearer, more diagrams are added in the second chapter. These diagrams will help the reader relate to the actual scenarios while going through the concepts.
• There are four full-length question papers at the end of this book which would come in handy at the time of preparing for the exam. All question papers have been modified to match the actual question patterns and topic coverage to ensure that readers are not caught on the wrong foot when taking the real exams.

It is our continuous endeavour to keep ourselves abreast of the changes happening in the field of Agile. This is a very dynamic area, with new concepts evolving every day. We hope that this third edition is helpful to all our readers.

S. Chandramouli and Saikat Dutt