· If you want to have a good chance in the job market, you need to be at least familiar with Agile if not a practitioner. I mentioned earlier that many job posting these days include Agile as a requirement or an advantage. If you want to look for a new job in project management, an Agile certificate gives you an advantage and open more doors. With that in mind, I was already spending time and effort to learn about the Agile practices. And as I was putting the effort to learn and apply, it made sense to get certified.
· The new PMPs had an edge on me out of the gate, as the PMP exam (starting Jan 2 2021) started including about 50% of questions on Agile and Hybrid methods. I earned my PMP certification in 2009, and back then the PMBOK Guide and PMP exam was very much focused on a predictive delivery model of projects. As the practice in the profession was changing, and since PMI updates the PMBOK Guide based on how the practices are evolving, the 6th edition of the PMBOK which was released in 2017 included an Agile Practice Guide for the first time. The PMBOK guide 6th edition is more than 700 pages, and it included sections named “Consideration for agile/adaptive Environments” and mentioned Agile under “Tailoring considerations”. The Agile Guide practice is a standalone book of more than 150 pages. That’s a lot of material for anyone to go through!
Based on the feedback that PMI received on the 6th edition, and based on how the profession was evolving, PMI decided to rewrite the PMBOK completely with a new approach, and slim it down significantly. The 7th edition, released August 1, 202, shifted from a process-based approach to a principle-based approach. Instead of Knowledge areas and Process Groups you will find Principles and Performance Domains. With this change to the PMP exam and the 7th edition of the PMBOK , PMI integrated Agile practices into its core offerings.
Below is an excerpt from the PMBOK 7th edition that speaks for this change in approach.
Project Management Institute. 2021. Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge.
· Although I had a good understanding of Agile practices, I wanted to have more credibility when I talk about Agile in the workplace. There were some misconceptions being shared in the office under the Agile umbrella. Things like “I am using an Agile approach, so I don’t need to document my work, I don’t need to have a plan, and I don’t need to have a process or structure”. This is far from being true but is certainly not uncommon. After I earned my certification, the conversations in the office around Agile became less casual, and my colleagues would confirm with me when talking about the subject - I was the only one with an Agile certification in the office. Since then, we have been having more formal discussions in the office about Agile practices and how to properly integrate them in our work. Also, my director started involving in me more strategic conversations on how to develop the PMO.
· My annual evaluation was coming up, and I wanted to have something of significant value to include as a professional development achievement. I wanted to show my director that I am continuing to grow my skills and my value to the organization, and that I am committed to developing myself as a professional in the project management field. I had been thinking about doing the PMI-ACP exam for almost a year, but kept procrastinating. The scheduled evaluation gave me a deadline to work against, and I took that deadline very seriously! I scheduled the ACP exam for the weekend before my evaluation, which gave me about 3 months of preparation time.
Just a couple of weeks before my evaluation, it was postponed for a month, but I kept my PMI-ACP exam date the same. I started thinking if I can use the additional month to earn another Agile certification – after all I had put a lot of time and energy on the subject. I ended up also earning the Professional Scrum Master certificate before my evaluation, with minimal additional preparation.
· PMI are a global leader and project management education and certification. The organization has a very good reputation and is well known worldwide. The PMP certification, which is the flagship certification by PMI, is known to be challenging to qualify for and achieve. It established the reputation for PMI as not giving out certificates easily. You can’t go wrong with getting any certificate from PMI, and I recommend you always look into what they offer before deciding to go with another organization.
· I had already earned my PMP certification from PMI, and I am a member of PMI (you don’t have to be a member to get a certificate and vice versa). In considering options, I expected an agile certificate by PMI would be more practical to maintain administratively (same website, same process) and will have more synergy with my PMP in terms of knowledge and information (Similar terms and approach) .
· Although PMI offers several other agile certifications (Under the family of Disciplined Agile), the PMI-ACP was more interesting to me for the following reasons:
o It is broad in content, covering multiple approaches such as Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD)
o In comparison, the Disciplined Agile certificates are designed around a “tool kit” that integrates different agile practices, so it is “a way of doing agile”. I was not aiming to learn a specific way. That being said, PMI are investing a lot in the Disciplined Agile approach, and have built a complete web site around it https://www.pmi.org/disciplined-agile
o It requires some experience to qualify for, which shows that you have already applied agile principles at work and not just read about them
o It has a more difficult exam, and a reputation of being harder to achieve. Here is a comparison of PMI-ACP with PMP and two disciplined agile certificates:
Certificate
Exam Duration in minutes
Number of exam questions
Maintenance Requirements in PDUs
PMP
230
180
60/ 3 year
PMI-ACP
180
120
30/3 years
DASM (Disciplined Agile Scrum Master)
90
50
7/ 1 year
DASSM (Disciplined Agile Senior Scrum Master)
90
50
7/ 1 year