The PMI-ACP application was straightforward except for documenting my experience! So, I will just talk about that part.
The application gets automatically closed after 90 days if you don’t complete and submit it. That is what happened to me while I was procrastinating. When an application for a PMI certificates gets closed it would still show up on your dashboard with a button next to it that says “Re-open Application”. For some reason when I was ready to complete the application, I was not able to find it anymore, so I had to contact the PMI helpdesk, who were able to give me a direct link/URL to the application and I was then able to complete it.
You will need to document at least 8 months of experience in applying Agile methodologies in the last 3 years. My PMP certification allowed me to waive the 12 months general project management experience.
I knew which projects I wanted to include in the application, but I was not clear on how best to document my experience. After a lot of searching, I found two webpages that where helpful:
o Filling the PMI-ACP Exam Application Form – Job Experience Description Sample by Edward Chung. Edward has a ton of valuable information about preparing for the PMI-ACP exam. Make sure you scroll through his site!
o Documenting Agile Experience for PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) by EPMC, a professional training services organization
Below is what I ended up documenting as my experience (I only changed the names of the projects and the organization). The key point here is that your experience doesn’t have to be from a strictly agile approach. Explaining how you applied some agile practices or principles in your projects should be sufficient.
Words count: 315 words
Project Title: Oasis Center - Technology Equipment Deployment
Project Role: Project Manager
Project Description:
The Oasis Center is a 290,000 sqf state of the art Surgical and ICU medical center, that the hospital built from the ground, to provide advanced services to its community. The scope of the Technology Equipment Deployment project was to define requirements, source, and deploy more than 7000 pcs of technology equipment, which included various models of computes, phones, printers, and digital boards.
As a project manager I was responsible for leading the planning activities, and the deployment and quality control process.
The project required an adaptive management approach in some phases due to the following:
- Changes in requirements and priorities. As the building was starting to take shape, and more stakeholders got involved, workflows were modified to better serve the patients
- Varying availability and lead times of devices. Several devices were not available in stock in the quantity and specifications we needed, and some were on backorder. Our procurement planning had to accommodate the dynamics of the supply chain on one side, and the limited space in our warehouses on the other
- Changes to the technology. Between the time requirements and specifications were initially defined, and the time of placing orders, several products had been discontinued completely or replaced by newer models
Some agile methods that we used for the project, especially for the procurement and deployment efforts:
- Daily huddles, in which the team aligned on priorities and responsibilities, and shared issues or concerns
- Colocation of the project team. The team worked full time from one conference room in the basement of the Oasis Center for several months. The room was the same room used for the daily huddles, and was directly next to the equipment receiving and staging area. This was instrumental for the success of the project
- Working from a backlog, which allowed us to adapt to changes in priorities and availability of devices or human resources, both of which couldn’t be forecasted far ahead of time
Words count: 331 words
Project tile: Matari Project Management Tool rollout
Project Role: Project Manager
Project Description:
Matari is the enterprise project management tool that was adopted recently by the hospital. It is a highly customizable web-based application with an extensive set of features. To use Matari in our environment, what we had to build data fields, workflows, automation, dashboards, reports and interfaces. Matari had to be set up to be used by multiple departments within the hospital, multiple programs within the PMO, and all levels of stakeholders in the organization.
As a project manager I was responsible for developing the rollout roadmap, and leading the execution of the different activities, in collaboration with multiple user groups and technical resources.
The project required an adaptive management approach in some phases due to the following:
- Matari, and its capabilities and features, was new to us, and we had to design and build it as we were learning how it works
- The Matari development team is continuously adding new features and modifying the way the application works. All updates get pushed to all customers, and we learn about them after implementation. This kept us in an ongoing discovery and adaptation process, adjusting our workflows and our internally developed automation functions
- Our PMO was growing rapidly at the time we started to use Matari, and our structure and users’ needs were evolving as we grow
- Our newly formed Quality Management and Process Standards team was building guidelines and best practices as we were configuring and rolling out Matari
Some agile methods that we used for the project:
- Using a roadmap based on planned outcomes rather than specific deliverables, with a high-level timeline. The roadmap was regularly reviewed with the PMO director, and scope and timeline were adjusted to accommodate priorities and availability of resources. Guided by the roadmap, we explored requirements and built a backlog
- Regular feedback and validation reviews with the end users
- Incremental development through frequent delivery. We aimed to make the learning curve reasonable, and the application usable from first day of the rollout