PMI-ACP EXAM IS CHANGING
By Diane Brady
On July 15, 2015 the PMI-ACP exam was revamped and the pilot period began. The overall experience requirements have not changed but some of the content has.
The PMI Portland Chapter will be working to schedule a PMI-ACP Exam Prep Course in the October/November timeframe. This is a three-day course (consecutive Saturdays) to help you prepare for the exam. Send me an email if you would like to be included on the notification list for this course. In the meantime, here’s a look at what you can expect.
Summary of Changes
- 1 new Domain: Agile Principles and Mindset
- Substantially reworded, or new Tasks
- New types of Tools and Techniques
- New topics under Knowledge and Skills (12 were removed)
- 4 reference books were added and 4 were removed
The number of exam questions has not changed and the fees remain the same. Go to http://www.pmi.org/certification/exam-changes/pmi-acp.aspx for full details.
In addition there is now an added description for each Domain area in the PMI-ACP Exam Outline, which I have included below in italics for you along with some brief notes on key additions. There is a lot more in-depth coverage on lean and how you “optimize the whole” and “eliminate waste;” maximizing customer value; and the things needed to do agile well. All excellent additions, and I would expect to see many new questions on the exam in these areas.
PMI-ACP Exam Domains
The updated Exam Outline now has a new domain, “Agile Principles and Mindset” for a total of seven domains. Some of the tasks listed in each domain have been reworded, re-arranged, and new tasks have been added. Below is a snapshot of the new items.
Domain I: Agile Principles and Mindset (16% of items on the test are in this new area)
Explore, embrace, and apply agile principles and mindset within the context of the project team and organization.
You can expect the exam to test you much more on agile principles and the agile mindset:
- Advocate for Agile principles by example and understand the values so you can share and influence customers and team members.
- Promote and ensure everyone has a common understanding of Agile principles. This includes educating and influencing the organization and support system change in order to be more effective and efficient with people, processes, and behaviors.
- Promote transparency and trust by maintaining highly visible information radiators showing progress and performance.
- Understand how you can contribute to a safe and trustful team environment by allowing the team to experiment and make mistakes, which is part of learning, so the team can continuously improve. This includes enhancing creativity through experimentation with new processes and tools for new and better ways to work.
- Encourage emergent team leadership, fostering self-organization and empowerment.
- Foster collaboration and encourage team members to share their knowledge by working together, reducing bottlenecks and lower risks around work siloes.
- Understand and practice servant leadership, encouraging other in their endeavors, removing obstacles so they can perform at optimal level and continuously improve.
Domain II: Value-Driven Delivery
Deliver valuable results by producing high-value increments for review, early and often, based on stakeholder priorities. Have the stakeholders provide feedback on these increments, and use this feedback to prioritize and improve future increments.
- Understand limiting size and increasing frequency of reviews with stakeholders to minimize risks and cost as soon as possible; prioritize and maintain internal quality to reduce overall cost of incremental development.
- Know how you balancing development and risk reduction in the backlog to maximize value over time.
- Recognize how you would elicit and prioritize relevant environmental non-functional requirements and incorporate into the process and product/service.
Domain III: Stakeholder Engagement
Engage current and future interested parties by building a trusting environment that aligns their needs and expectations and balances their requests with an understanding of the cost/effort involved. Promote participation and collaboration throughout the project life cycle and provide the tools for effective and informed decision making.
- Understand how you establish a shared vision around project incremental iterations and releases to align stakeholders’ expectations.
Domain IV: Team Performance
Create an environment of trust, learning, collaboration, and conflict resolution that promotes team self-organization, enhances relationships among team members, and cultivates a culture of high performance.
- Understand how you would empower others and encourage emerging leadership to produce product\service and mange complexity.
Domain V: Adaptive Planning
Produce and maintain evolving plan, from initiation to closure, based on goals, values, risks, constraints, stakeholder feedback, and review findings.
- Use progressive elaboration techniques independent of team velocity and external variables to determine the project size.
- Know how to develop a starting point to determine the level of effort for managing the project by creating a high-level initial scope, schedule, and cost range estimate.
Domain VI: Problem Detection and Resolution (no new tasks)
Continuously identify problems, impediments, and risks; prioritize and resolve in a timely manner; monitor and communicate the problem resolution status; and implement process improvements to prevent them from occurring again.
Domain VII: Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, People)
Continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, and value of the product, the process, and the team.
- Understand how to challenge existing process elements to eliminate waste and increase efficiency by performing a value stream analysis.
Tools & Techniques
The Agile “Toolkit" has also expanded quite a bit. Below is a list of the new tools in each section.
Agile Analysis and Design
- Workshops
- Learning cycle
- Collaboration games
Communication
- Trustworthy two-way communications
- Social media-based communication
- Active listening
- Brainstorming
- Feedback methods
Metrics
- Throughput/productivity
- Lead time
- Work-in-progress (WIP)
- Defect rates
Planning, Monitoring and Adapting
- Variance and trend analysis
- Reviews
- Backlog grooming/refinement
- Product-feedback loop
Process Improvement
- Intraspectives
- Hybrid models
- Kaizen
- Five Whys
- Fishbone diagram analysis
- Control Limits
- Pre-mortem (rules for failure analysis)
Product Quality
- Exploratory and usability testing
Risk Management
- Architectural spike
Value-Based Prioritization
- Minimal Viable Product (MVP)
- Requirements reviews
- MoSCoW
- Kano analysis
Exam Agile Knowledge & Skills
Key additions
- Agile discovery
- Developmental mastery models (Tuckman, Dreyfus, Shu Ha Ri)
- Managing with agile KPIs
Reference Material
New ACP reference books
- Exploring Scrum: The Fundamentals by Dan Rawsthorne, Doug Shimp
- Kanban in Action by Marcus Hammarberg, Joakim Sunden
- Kanban Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business by David J Anderson
- Effective Project Management - Traditional, Agile, Extreme
Retiring ACP reference books
- Becoming Agile...in an Imperfect World by Greg Smith, Ahmed Sidky
- The Art of Agile Development by James Shore
- Agile Project Management with Scrum by Ken Schwaber
I am very excited about these changes. They complement and round out the study materials for the exam and make the PMI-ACP certification even more significant to both the holder and organizations looking for agile professionals!