PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®) Certificate

This post is for Project Management Institute (PMI)’s Agile Certified Practitioner(PMI-ACP) Certificate. Exam for this certificate is meant to test skills of agile practitioners. Pre-requisite for appearing in the exam includes having prior experience in general project management (2000+ hours) and agile specific project management (1500+ hours). Folks having prior PMP^® or PgMP^® automatically satisfy general project management experience and hence need not elaborate the experience while filling the form. Also pre-requisite requires having 21 contract hours earned in agile practice, which could include imparting or participating in agile training [Certified Scrum Master (CSM®), In-house agile training, Coaching Client, etc.]

My experience of the exam includes following tips

1. This exam tests knowledge on tools, techniques, processes, artifacts, etc. of those practicing agile. It includes knowledge on Scrum, XP, Kanban & Lean including each of the terminologies, ceremonies/meetings, roles, etc. associated with them

2. Its important to be familiar with agile specific principles and keywords including

• Agile Manifesto
• Agile Twelve Principles
• Adaptive Leadership, 
• Affinity Estimating,
• Agile Scaling Model
• Agile Leadership
• Agile Triangle
• Agile Earned Value Management (EVM)
• Definition of Done
• Burn Down Charts
• Burn Up Charts
• Chartering in Agile
• Collaboration
• Collocated or Distributed Teams
• Conflict Types or Levels of Conflict
• Continuous Integration
• Cumulative Flow Diagrams
• Customer Valued Prioritization
• Emotional Intelligence
• Empirical Process Control
• Escaped Defects
• Exploratory Testing
• Extreme Programming (XP) including roles, principles, TDD, CI, Pair Programming, etc.
• Fractional Assignments
• Information Radiator
• Internal Rate of Return (IRR)
• INVEST Model
• Iteration and Release Planning
• Lean including process, value, five why's, etc.
• Kanban including process, principles, task boards, etc.
• Kano Model
• Osmotic Communication (Open space or collocation advantage) 
• Pareto Principle
• Payback Period
• Relative Sizing 
• Refactoring
• Retrospections
• Risk Burn Down Charts
• Risk Exposure
• Scrum Ceremonies/Meetings (Release Planning, Sprint/Iteration Planning, Daily Scrum Meetings, Sprint Review, Sprint Retrospection)
• Servant Leadership
• Signal Card
• Story points (how to calculate them) 
• Use Cases
• Technical Debt 
• Triangulation
• User Stories
• Value Stream Mapping
• Velocity

3. I have been practicing Agile for 6 years and have digested most of the recommended reference books by PMI for this certification. Having said that when I tried answering the sample questions, was not getting more than 60%. That's when I realized that there are some gaps between practical and standard defined under PMI. After doing some googling, found AgileExams having some good set of questions and brought package of $49 for 9 months. 

4. Have to confess that going through this certification process was definitely beneficial for me as there are lot of things that I learned, which helped me improve upon certain processes that I follow. For example, how to control daily scrum meetings to not exceed more then 15 minutes, how earned value (Cost, Schedule) should be calculated for agile projects, getting familiar with keywords like osmotic communication, triangulation, servant leader, mapping agile values to my current projects, etc. 

5. I spent ~10 hours practicing the exams (short & long) and scheduled the exam in a prometric center, which luckily for me turned out to be less than a mile from my home and was having an opening slot within a day.

6. Allocated exam time is 3 Hours and consists of 120 questions. When I started the exam, I did answer the first question and then instead of 'marking' (middle button), pressed 'review' button (right bottom). It opened the review screen and I missed a beat, phew!!! :). I then went back to the exam screen and being little more attentive this time. After answering initial 2 -3 questions, found my rhythm & confidence and finished the exam within 40 minutes, marking ~10 questions. Took a break for using the restroom and finished reviewing the marked questions in next 5 minutes. I then spent some 1-2 minutes answering survey question about the prometric center and then it came on my screen something like " Congratulations on passing the PMI-ACP® examination"

7. I have prepared some notes on Agile Certified Practitioner exam, similar to my notes on My Notes on PMP® or My Notes on PgMP®, which I will be sharing in my next post. 

Following are some useful links which have free sample tests

1. http://www.agileexams.com/

2. http://starpmo.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3

3. http://agiletraining.com/2011/09/24/pmi-acp-agile-certification-exam-study-tips/

4. http://pmiacptraining.com/

5. http://whitewaterprojects.com/pmi-acp-sample-exam/#

6. http://www.agiledream.com

7. http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=pmiacp

8. http://www.rmcproject.com/pmi-acp/pmi-acp-FreeContent.aspx

9. https://www.keysurvey.com/votingmodule/s180/survey/349789/69ea/

10. https://insite.velociteach.com/pmi_acp_practiceTest_A.aspx

Certified Scrum Master

This post is about Certified Scrum Master. Agile project management is as radically different from traditional project management as agile processes are different from traditional methodologies. Rather than plan, instruct and direct, the agile project manager facilitates, coaches and leads. This person is called a ScrumMaster in the Scrum agile process to denote the difference and remind the person filling this role of the new responsibilities.Accepted participants learn how to be a ScrumMaster and how to make a development team, a project, or an organization agile. Exercises, case studies, and examples used to bring home the realization of how to be a ScrumMaster instead of a project manager.
Scrum Certification is about attending a two-day course, which gives participants hands-on experience using Scrum. Participants gain practical experience working with Scrum tools and activities such as the product backlog, sprint backlog, daily Scrum meetings, sprint planning meeting, and burndown charts.
Following successful completion of the course, each participant will be designated Certified ScrumMaster. This certification includes a one-year membership in the Scrum Alliance, where additional ScrumMaster-only material and information are available.

Scrum References

Following are some of the Scrum References

1. Agile Project Management with Scrum (Ken Schwaber)
2. The Scrum Papers (Jeff Sutherland)
3. Scrum and XP from the Trenches

Scrum in a nut shell

Scrum is an Agile process or framework for managing Agile projects. It is a project management process, certainly not a methodology, as that would be too heavy. Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework. Scrum structures product development in cycles of work called Sprints, iterations of work which are typically 1-4 weeks in length, and which take place one after the other.
Scrum is one of several Agile methods for developing and deploying software, although it may be used for non-software initiatives whenever people need to work together to achieve a common goal. The primary objective of Agile development is to deliver value early in the Project Lifecycle based upon customer and market demands. The ability to deliver value early and often, yet readily adapting to change, is considered to be a major contributor in making Agile Development one of the more rapidly growing trends in technology.
Scrum is a method for project management that is becoming increasingly more common
in the software industry. Small teams consisting of a maximum 6-8 people divide their
work into “mini projects” that have a duration of about one month during which a limited
number of detailed tasks are solved. Where traditional methods focus on staying on
track, Scrum is aimed at – like other agile methods - delivering business value

Scrum Basics
Scrum is an iterative, incremental framework.

Scrum is not a process – rather, it’s a framework which provides a lot of visibility to the team, and a mechanism that allows them to “inspect and adapt” accordingly

Scrum structures product development in cycles of work called Sprints, iterations of work which are typically 1-4 weeks in length, and which take place one after the other.

The Sprints are of fixed duration –they end on a specific date whether the work has been completed or not, and are never extended.

At the beginning of each Sprint, a cross-functional team selects items from a prioritized list of requirements, and commits to complete them by the end of the Sprint; during the Sprint, the deliverable does not change.

Each work day, the team gathers briefly to report to each other on progress, and update simple charts that orient them to the work remaining.

At the end of the Sprint, the team demonstrates what they have built, and gets feedback which can then be incorporated in the next Sprint.

Scrum emphasizes producing working product at the end of the Sprint is really “done”; in the case of software, this means code that is fully tested and potentially shippable

Scrum Values

1. Openness
2. Focus
3. Commitment
4. Courage
5. Respect and
6. Visibility

Scrum forces teams to take ownership of the success or failure of their project. In traditional waterfall methodology, its more often than not, a project manager who is responsible for project's success or failure.