PMI- ACP is one of the many certifications that PMI offers, which shows that you have knowledge of agile principles, and that you have already applied some of these principles. It covers many approaches to agile such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD).
To earn this certification, you will need to submit an application showing that you meet the Education and Experience requirements. If your application is approved, you will then have to pass the PMI-ACP exam.
o Education requirements
§ High school diploma or Bachelor’s degree
§ 21 contact hours of training in agile practices
o Experience requirements
§ 12 months of general project experience within the last 5 years (A current PMP® or PgMP® will satisfy this requirement but is not required to apply for the PMI-ACP®)
§ 8 months of agile project experience within the last 3 years
o Application process/steps
§ Do you meet the experience requirements?
§ Do you meet the education requirements?
§ If you meet both experience and education requirement, you can go ahead and submit your application
§ If the application is approved, proceed to schedule the exam (You are eligible for one year, and you may take the exam up to three times during that year)
§ (Continue to) Study, and pass
The PMI-ACP Handbook has full details about the process and policies.
The PMI-ACP® examination consists of 120 questions (100 scored items and 20 unscored pre-test items. PMI uses the term “items” for the questions). The unscored items will not be identified and will be randomly distributed throughout the exam.
The exam is based on 7 domains (shown in the table below), which are further divided into 13 subdomains and 62 tasks. The tasks are statements that detail expected behavior or action under the main domain. They help explain the mindset or approach that PMI identified as the Agile way. Sounds confusing? Take a look at the “the “PMI-ACP Examination Content Outline” and you might get even more confused. You will see several tables, not only for “Domains and Tasks” but also for “Tools and Techniques” and “Knowledge and Skills”. Lots of tables but little explanation of what to do with it! Luckily there are in the market good certification preparation books to study from.
I noticed that the “PMP Examination Content Outline” explains Domains and Tasks better, and has other helpful information that PMI didn’t include in the “PMI-ACP Examination Content Outline”. You might want to take a look at it
The allocation of questions is as follows:
Domain Percentage of Items on Test
Domain I. Agile Principles and Mindset 16%
Domain II. Value-driven Delivery 20%
Domain III. Stakeholder Engagement 17%
Domain IV. Team Performance 16%
Domain V. Adaptive Planning 12%
Domain VI. Problem Detection and Resolution 10%
Domain VII. Continuous Improvement (Product, Process, People) 9%
As you can notice, the percentages are very much spread, so you cant really ignore any area completely, but knowing the percentage of questions (which PMI call Items) in each domain will help you know where to focus your effort more.