Exam tips for PMI ACP Certification from PMI Agile Certified Practitioner

Recently I have passed PMI-ACP exam :-) with highest band and yes I am now an PMI-ACP Certified Practitioner. This post is about my experience, preparation strategy and also I am trying to cover exam's prerequisites and requirements.  

I have noticed I found many follow forums or professional networking sites LinkedIn to find out if they want to be certified or not and it is always a hotly debated topic. With valid arguments on both sides, my personal decision was Yes, I wanted to get certified. Looking back, I have to say that I didn’t regret it. Not only it opened but some interesting ones too. In-fact I learned a lot (and started to actively use my knowledge) just by studying for the test and going through cases. 

According to PMI, The PMI-ACP recognizes knowledge of agile principles, practices and tools and techniques across agile methodologies. In order to be certified, you need to demonstrate the following and pass 3 hours exam by answering 120 questions.

My preparation strategy

First of all, the below reflects my personal experience only. Everybody’s story is different. You may already be an agile guru by experience or may be fairly new and need extra effort to prepare.

My first advise would be to join one of the PMI-ACP study groups on LinkedIn. In my case, I have been an Agile Coach for past 6 years but still the information I got from these groups was instrumental in my preparation. 

In order to satisfy the 21 educational PDU requirements, I opted for classroom training at simplilearn and also had access to there online course materials and exams. I wouldn't recommend just sticking to these notes of any tutorials rather read the main preparation book and it was Mike Griffin’s Exam Prep Book. I loved it! Really great summary at the right level of details. Overall for the exam I spent 4 weekends (i.e. 4x2=8 days) of studying because apart from weekends I was busy with my work with Red Hat. But this may vary from person to person and probably in my case since I have implemented agile practices across teams it was not extremely difficult to pass the exam. However, keep one thing in mind you need to cover the entire book and I recommend you to not skip any material. 

Take Mock tests for real exam

For final exam I have taken mock tests from quite a few sites. But mainly I have subscribed to agileexams.com for $49 which comes with 30 days membership and taken multiple short exams(25 questions in each exam) and two full exams (120 questions in exam). Fun with agileexams.com  you can take as many as exams you like and remember to review answers understanding why something is incorrect or even for that matter correct is very important because in real PMI-ACP exam you will be tested based on your understanding. Apart from that you may also take exams from following:

1. Free Full test 120 Q @ http://www.simplilearn.com/free-resources/pmi-acp-agile
2. Sample 20 Questions @ http://www.ucertify.com/exams/PMI/PMI-ACP.html
3. Free 30 Questions / exam simulator @ http://www.gr8pm.com
4. http://agiletraining.com/2011/09/24/pmi-acp-agile-certification-exam-study-tips/
5. http://pmiacptraining.com/
6. http://whitewaterprojects.com/pmi-acp-sample-exam/#
7. http://www.agiledream.com
8. http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=pmiacp
9. http://www.rmcproject.com/pmi-acp/pmi-acp-FreeContent.aspx

Exam experience

I took the exam at the Prometric center which was about 9kms from my home.

Overall my experience wasn’t very much different from what I have learned by reading other task takers comments. I had a balanced set of questions with most of them related to Scrum,XP, Lean,few risk management & Kanban questions, a good portion of situation questions, some questions on the manifesto / agile values, and some tricky ones on agile portfolio management, EVM, and costs.

I wouldn't call the test very difficult but it was challenging enough to keep me thinking very very carefully about my answers. It was more focused on testing the understanding and practical applications of the core agile values rather then on simply testing how well you remember the definitions. In other words, I encountered more “why”, “how”, and “when” then simple “what is ..” questions. Usually out of 4 answers 2 were obviously wrong but I had to choose carefully between the remaining 2. I managed to finish all 120 questions in 2 hours (120 minutes) and spent another hour reviewing my answers. The results are known immediately once you finish the test and you get a temporary certificate on the spot. Also you will be able to down the certificate from the PMI website. Few weeks later you’ll get the proper certificate by mail and waiting to receive it.

XP vs Lean vs FDD

Over the years I have noticed people getting confused about XP vs Lean vs FDD so thought to put together this article view

Japanese Way - Lean Development

Why Lean?

Lean practices promote speed and flexibility by implementing core disciplines that promote change tolerance and allow decisions to be delayed as long as possible. Lean software development changes the focus from gathering requirements to encoding all requirements in tests. It introduces the concept of refactoring that is, creating a simple design at the beginning of development to handle early requirements, and then improving the design later as more requirements are discovered.

System testing and code integration are perform regularly to ensure maintainable code which reflects flexibility for any rapid change. Considering all these qualities it is evident that if this framework is applied in software
development it can produce highest quality software in shortest possible time.

About

Lean Software Development defines the maturity of an organization by how quickly and reliably it can serve its customers. It is based on the theory and principles behind lean production, which was pioneered by the once – upstart Toyota automobile company. Lean Software Development is a toolkit of principles, ideas that guide but that are not concrete instruction of what to do, that may be used by managers and team leaders to identify, shape, and implement practices for the project team and organization. It will resolve unacknowledged issues in software development but will also improve the development process and obtain better results.
Lean development takes lean manufacturing principles and applies them to software development. Lean development is founded by these following described principles.

Eliminate Waste: Waste is any activity, artefact or output that does not add value to the system. This includes documents that are not required, components that are built but then not used any features programmed that are not immediately needed, and even the handing off of activities from one group to another. Basically, whatever slows down the project team from giving the customer what he needs is considered waste. “However, the priority of the project team should be to avoid these following wastes during
the development process, which are

· Overproduction (Extra features)
· Inventory (Requirements)
· Extra processing steps
· Motion (Finding information)
· Defects (Bugs not caught by tests)
· Waiting (Waiting for decisions, including customers)
· Transportation (Handoffs) ”

Amplify learning:

This principle distinguishes the development process from the production process. While the production process is focused on reducing variation; the development process is focused on defining the right product
or system. Project teams need to put processes in place and shape their environments. Decide as late as  possible: This principle tackles environments of high and rapid change head on. Delaying decisions allows a project team to wait until the future is closer and easier to predict. Keeping options open in terms of
design requirements and code enables a project team to move quickly on new and even unexpected pieces of information.

Deliver as fast as possible: Delivering working software quickly and as needed instead of all at once and after substantial investment and effort helps reinforce the three above discussed principles. By focusing on
delivering what is needed now, we are able to hold off on decisions about what may be needed later. Learning is amplified because early deliveries enable the customer and the team to better understand and give feedback on the portions of the system that have yet to be developed. Finally, reducing the time between a request for functionality and the delivery of that functionality also reduces waste.

Empower the team: One of basic principle of Lean Production “is to drive decisions down to lowest possible level, delegating decision – making tools and authority to the people on the floor ”

Decisions cannot be put off until as late as possible if they all need to be made by managers and other highlevel people. When programmers are provided with appropriate guidance and engaged in activities related to design and process, they make better decisions on their own than anyone else could make for them.

Build in integrity: Integrity means that the product or system is put together well, operates smoothly, will continue to be useful over time, can be extended, is easy to use, and is not difficult to maintain. Integrity comes from good leadership, domain knowledge, communication and discipline, not simply good practice and process. The integrity of a system is based on how well its part work together, not simply quality of each individual part.