Answers to Top PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) ^SM Certification Questions

Just finished interviewing Rory McCorkle who is the product owner for the new PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) ^SM certification. For those who could not attend please watch the recorded version online, it is worth listening to! You will need a pmi.org username/password to login.

http://lead.vc.pmi.org/Webinars/ViewWebinar.aspx?WebinarAction=View&WebinarExternalKey=791467a0-b7c7-42a8-b4ce-7be05da6dfdb

Interested in the watching previous PMI webinars in our ‘Transforming to Agile’ series? Click here.

Below are some of the top answers:

Q: What is the value of this PMI-ACP ^SM certification to organizations and individuals?
A: There are several benefits but here are a few:

1. This certification is one of the few that crosses the methodological boundaries and does not focus on only one of the methods. Agile is an overarching framework that is a collection of methods such as Scrum, XP, Lean, Kanban and so on. Companies do not tend to use only one of these so this certification is more comprehensive in its coverage of topics and knowledge areas.
2. Additionally, the certification requires actual experience with Agile instead of being training related only. Instead of only attending training and being certified (actually referred to as a ‘certificate’ in the certification arena) you have to demonstrate experience with Agile and pass a comprehensive examination with an accredited certification body (PMI).

Q: Which certification should someone choose to get? the CSM, PMP® or PMI-ACP ^SM certification?
A: The PMP®  is designed to test your overall competence as a project manager through more rigorous examination, experience requirements and adherence to the PMI code of ethics. PMI-ACP ^SM certification is designed to test knowledge of Agile methods and practices so we see many PMP®  add on the PMI-ACP^SM to demonstrate their knowledge and ability to lead both types of traditional and Agile projects. When comparing the CSM and PMI-ACP ^SM certification, I would say they are for different audiences. The CSM is achieved by going into a classroom and sitting through the 2 day class. The current exam is not a pass/fail exam even though I know the ScrumAlliance is working on changing this shortly. It also focuses specifically on the Scrum method. PMI-ACP ^SM certification is intended for individuals looking for a certification that requires both training, experience with Agile and is more comprehensive in its coverage of topics.

Q: Which books are recommended as reading for the PMI-ACP ^SM certification?
A: The ones listed in the PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Reference Materials Guide: http://bit.ly/pmi-acp-reading-books. You should also follow the PMI-ACP^SM certification exam content outline: http://bit.ly/pmi-acp-exam-content-outline

Q: What’s the update on the PMI-ACP^SM Certification Pilot?
A: Since February 2011,

• 7,000+ people have signed up to receive further information about the PMI-ACP ^SM certification pilot
• 5,000+ individuals have responded to PMI’s “Agile knowledge” quiz
• 150,000+ individuals have visited PMI’s www.PMI.org/Agile launch page
• Since 23 May, 7,000+ applicants have opened a PMI-ACP ^SM certification application
• 1,300+ individuals have submitted a PMI-ACP ^SM certification application to participate in the pilot

Q: Will PMI create an AgileBOK? will PMI include Agile practices in the next versions of the PMBOK Guide?
A: No, there are no plans of creating an AgileBOK since Agile is such a robust framework that is very dynamic and ever changing. We are working with IEEE on a Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide over the next couple of years and will include references to Agile there.

Q: Will PMI be producing a PMI-ACP^SM certification study guide?
A: No, PMI has published the reference list of recommended reading books for the exam and has never produced a study guide book for its own exams. They rely on their approved REPs to provide this education and training.

Q: What changes will happen in Dec 2011 to this certification? when will the final version be out?
A: We will not make changes to the examination outline guide itself, only to the questions based on the feedback we’re getting from the Agile Community of Practice and others on the exam. We think it will be the end of January before the final changes are incorporated into the exam itself.

Q: How does someone earn the 21 Contact Hours required for the certification? do webinars count?
A:  Please refer to the PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Handbook to understand what qualifies for Contact Hours. Search for the word ‘contact hours’. Webinars usually count towards PDUs but not towards contact hours. The training session should have some type of assessment at the end or specify a timeline of when the assessment needs to be completed by. Self study usually doesn’t count towards the 21 Contact Hours. Your CSM training class would count towards the 21 Contact Hours in addition to other Agile related training provided by REPs, PMI Chapters and other providers listed in the handbook.

————————- End of Interview with Rory ——————————–

Resources to Help You Prepare for YOUR PMI-ACP ^SM Exam:

• Upcoming PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Exam Prep On-site and Virtual Workshops (21 Contact Hours)
• Join the PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Study Group on LinkedIn (dedicated to discussing this exam, feel free to post your questions or feedback after taking the exam)
• Join the PMI Agile Community of Practice (lots of great Agile information and webinars by experts and community members)
• Read my popular PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Detailed Exam Study Tips
• Join the PMI Learning and Education Community of Practice (I’m the Agile Expert for this community and host a ‘Transforming to Agile’ series of monthly webinars)
• http://www.AgileExams.com has created a great online test practice website with great reviews. We include access for FREE in our PMI-ACP^SM certification courses!

Sally Elatta – President Enterprise Coach & Trainer Agile Transformation Inc.

About Me: I am simply a transformer. Someone who is really passionate about helping organizations move towards building lean high performing collaborative teams that can deliver value predictably. I like to find practical solutions to solve real problems and use a combination of Agile, Scrum, Lean, Soft Skills and Servant Leadership to reach the desired target. I am the Agile Expert for the PMI Learning, Education and Development (LEAD) community of practice and I host a popular Agile webinar series and blogs on transforming to Agile. Full profile/bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elatta

PMI and PMP are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc., and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) and PMI-ACP are service marks of Project Management Institute, Inc.

PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Exam Prep Online Training

Friends, we’re really excited to share that our recent PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Prep online training was a great success! Bryan Tew (Master Trainer!) just delivered this course and we decided to break it up to 4 days of around 5.25 hours per day so that participants could still get ‘some’ work done. Online courses are never the same as in person courses but we had just received lots of interest and we’re happy this pilot turned out excellent and valuable for our students! We also decided to give the participants access to recorded version for a few days to help them review what was covered which was requested by the participants themselves. Checkout our current PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Prep Training Schedule

Here is some feedback from the students who just attended (we’re not bragging, just excited )

Though the training was about  5hrs each day, at the end of the day it really did not feel that strenuous. The course was well planned and very well organized. The class I sat in was a online-virtual class, and was well suited.  Sreerama N

PMI-ACP referred to a total of 11 books. I did buy them all, and had them for a while. Compared to the money on all those books (and of course, I did not read them all yet), the money I spent on the training was justified. Just four days of training helped raise my practice test scores. I feel confident that using the strategies given by Bryan Tew, I should put a decent performance in the real exam. Sreerama N

Deep knowledge of the instructor good practice high number of references – Juan M

Amazing training even with the challenges of the distributed team. Bryan managed to help us all to take full advantage of it. – Juan M

I was impressed by the different tools used during the class GoogleDoc, online planning poker estimate, drawings. – Luigi R.

Right pace, lot of real world examples and workshops. Venkat G.

The instructor was very good, understood and explained all the Agile Methodologies, and practices. This will certainly help me pass the exam. Sheila D.

Updated, from our January 2012 class:

The course was excellent.  Bryan is an impressive facilitator and we had lively chats among participants (in 3 continents).  Peter O.

Just a quick update…class is amazing – Bryan is doing a great job, content is awesome, very good experience.  Glenn B.

So are YOU considering trying out an online PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Exam Prep course yourself? Checkout our schedule for our upcoming courses or let us know if you’d like us to deliver a course at your location. We travel all over the world and love it!

Looking to connect with others preparing for their exam? Join the active PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Linkedin Study Group.

The Agile Transformation Team

PMI and PMP are registered marks of Project Management Institute, Inc., and PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) and PMI-ACP are service marks of Project Management Institute, Inc.

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) ^SM Certification Study Tips

The PMI-ACP ^SM Certification is finally here and there is lots of BUZZ and interest surrounding it in the community which is very positive. I recently took the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) ^SM certification exam myself and posted ‘My PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Exam Retrospective’ blog.  The goal from this particular post is to provide a little more guidance and detailed tips on key topics that were outlined in the exam guide but several folks from the community had questions surrounding them to help you as you prepare to take your own exam. Several members of the PMI-ACP^SM certification steering committee and Agile Community of Practice also plan to post guides on various topics.
Below is the list of topics shared by Dennis Stevens in addition to a few more. I have to say that your best source for information on the exam content will be the recommended reading books listed on the www.pmi.org/agile page. My attempt below is only to clarify areas of ambiguity as best I can but do not claim to have any definitive answers on what will be on the exam !

Agile Methods:

• Review the Agile Values and Principles thoroughly.
• Learn Scrum thoroughly! (Ken’s Agile Project Management with Scrum is the recommended book for this)
  • Understand the key roles and what they do.
  • Understand the Scrum artifacts such as product backlog and burn down charts. Know what they are, why we use them and how to analyze the charts.
  • Understand the Scrum meetings such as Sprint Planning, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review and Retrospective very well. You should know what happens in each of these meetings.
  • Learn and understand the basic Scrum Rules. For example, how do we handle a new requirement/story that the Product Owner introduces in the middle of a Sprint? Who can speak during the daily Scrum?
• XP (eXtreme Programming) – (James Shore’s Art of Agile Development is the recommended book)
  • Really understand the XP roles and who does what.
  • Understand the various XP practices. For example
  • Understand Test Driven Development, how it works and its value.
  • Understand Continuous Integration, how it works and its value.
• Lean  (Alan Shalloway’s Lean-Agile Software Development is the recommended book to read)
  • Understand the History of Lean and the Lean Software Development Principles
  • What is Lean Portfolio Management and what is the value of it to the organization?
  • Value Stream Mapping,  How to do it Video
  • Understand the basics of Kanban (what is it? can you mix it with other Agile methods? how prescriptive is it? what is WIP? how does the Kanban wall help us optimize our process flow?..)
• Learn the other Agile methods and what they are about. (Crystal, FDD, DSDM ..)

Osmotic Communication :

• Alistair Cockburn (author of Agile Software Development – The Cooperative Game) describes this as the information that flows in the background hearing of teams that are co-located so they pick up relevant information, as though by osmosis.
• When someone asks a questions then others can tune in or out and contribute to the conversation. This is an example of rapid and rich feedback that has high value with little structure. It can help the team identify and address errors, issues and risks early on the project.

Servant Leadership:

• Leaders understand that their role is to empower the team, help them make their own decisions, help them become self organizing and not use command and control to direct them. This is the hardest transition initially for traditional project managers (and leaders) if they were used to a command and control style of managing.
• The focus of servant leaders is the growth and empowerment of the people instead of the management of the tasks. Learn how you can transition to being the team’s coach, mentor and facilitator instead of their problem solver.
• I’m really passionate about this topic so we have a full 2 day course just on this subject!

Agile Risk Management:

Agile Planning and Estimation:

Communications Management:

• Planning: Identifying who you need to communicate to (Team members, Sponsor, Stakeholders) and what you need to communicate to them (Project and Team Charters, Release Plan, Iteration planning, daily standup, demo and retrospective meeting dates/location, team velocity, team task board or team room location, project portal site, etc.)
• Stakeholder Management: Setting clear expectations from the very start with your stakeholders on what information they need, how and when they should engage with the team and how frequently (time commitment needed for success), how do we communicate changes in scope/time/schedule to them, how do we communicate project risk.
• Performance Reporting and Visible Information Radiators: Understanding what information radiators are all about and why we use them, how to leverage their power even for distributed teams, how we track and report performance through burn up/burn down charts at the iteration level and at the release level. How we can analyze the various charts and understand if things are going well or not and respond quickly to what we’re seeing.

Project and Quality Standards:

• Quality is collectively owned by the team and no longer the sole responsibility of the testing team. The testers, analysts and developers all collaborate early on to define the quality measures for their project.
• Quality planning in Agile happens as part of the team’s Release Planning, Iteration Planning and daily planning activities.
• The team along with the product owner develops their ‘Definition of Done’ that provides clear guidance for when a ‘story’ is done.
• This could also be defined at various other levels, for example we could have a ‘Release  definition of Done’ and a ‘Project definition of Done’. The story definition of Done would contain the product owner’s expectations for quality and the team’s standards. For example, a team could decide a story is Done when:
  • There are no outstanding open defects/issues.
  • The code has been checked in to source control and tagged correctly.
  • Unit testing has passed with x% code coverage.
  • ‘Just Enough’ documentation has been published.
  • All acceptance tests have passed.
  • Code has been deployed to QA/Test server.
  • Tester has ran automated tests with no issues.
• If the company has specific standards that need to be followed such as coding, security and architectural standards then the team may initially build consensus around them and inspect them during design and code review sessions or add them to their definition of Done.

Business Case Development:

• I think what is needed to understand here is how an Agile business case may differ from traditional business case development. An Agile Business Case could still be born during the traditional ‘Initiation’ phase which may also be referred to as ‘Visioning’ or ‘Feasibility’ in Agile and needs to have  ‘Just Enough’ or ‘Barely Sufficient’ analysis as Alistair Cockburn would say.
• An Agile business case may use techniques such as ‘Design the Box’ for defining the vision and objectives and should also include very clear conditions of satisfaction and measures for success (also called Project Level Definition of Done).
• High level requirements, a high level roadmap along with high level estimates could be submitted with the knowledge that after execution of a few iterations these estimates will be continuously updated to reflect the team’s new knowledge and actual velocity.

Applying New Agile Practices:

• Understanding how to effectively introduce Agile practices to a team through:
• Initial education on the Agile values, principles and drivers behind the need for this change in mindset.
• Gaining the teams buy-in for piloting the new practices by understanding how they address existing pain points or solve business problems.
• Using Adaptive Leadership to continuously inspect and adapt the practices after piloting them and defining a strategy for rolling them out to the larger organization.
• Defining Project and Team Charters to capture the team values and norms.

Organization and Regulatory Compliance:

• Understanding how an Agile team could address with organizational compliance related issues by using a higher body such as an Agile PMO to negotiate reasonable processes that satisfy both the needs of the team and the business instead of being the enforcer who dictates these processes with no input from the team.
• Teams need to work with their auditors to find the ‘right’ level of documentation that is actually needed to pass regulatory compliance and not just assume existing documents and processes that have been established for years cannot be improved to be more effective and efficient.

Innovation Games:

• You should know what innovation games are about (created by Luke Hohmann), why we use them and know the top ones such as Product Box (used during visioning) and Buy a Feature (used for prioritizing).

Control Limits:

• My thought is that this could be referring to the comparison between traditional Six Sigma ‘Defined Process Control’ where control limits are defined for product quality and defects (for example the production must yield less than 3.4 errors in one million) and Agile/Scrum which uses ‘Empirical Process Control’. Ken Shwaber argues that software is too complex to expect defects to be defined within specific error limits. However, Deming’s Plan-DO-Check-ACT (PDCA) cycle is well received in Agile as a form of inspect and adapt cycle.

Earned Value Management (EVM):

• I would read this great article by my colleague Mike Griffiths: Agile Earned Value Management (EVM)
• This is also another short and great read on Agile EVM by Tamara Sulaiman

Prepare for YOUR PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) ^SM Certification Exam:

• Upcoming PMI-ACP ^SM Certification Exam Prep On-site and Virtual Workshops (21 PDUs) – Learn from top Agile Practitioners and Experts!
• Join the PMI-ACP Study Group on LinkedIn (dedicated to discussing this exam, feel free to post your questions or feedback after taking the exam)
• Join the PMI Agile Community of Practice (lots of great Agile information and webinars by experts and community members)
• Join the PMI Learning and Education Community of Practice (I’m the Agile Expert for this community and host a ‘Transforming to Agile’ series of monthly webinars and blogs that are pretty popular, hope you can attend the next one on Agile Idea Qualification and Project Initiation)

Sally Elatta – President Enterprise Coach & Trainer http://agiletraining.com/

About Me: I am simply a transformer. Someone who is really passionate about helping organizations move towards building lean high performing collaborative teams that can deliver value predictably. I like to find practical solutions to solve real problems and use a combination of Agile, Scrum, Lean, Soft Skills and Servant Leadership to reach the desired target. I am the Agile Expert for the PMI Learning, Education and Development (LEAD) community of practice and I host a popular Agile webinar series and blogs on transforming to Agile. New PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) SM Certification Exam Prep Workshops! Full profile/bio: http://www.linkedin.com/in/elatta