LeadingAnswers: Leadership and Agile Project Management Blog

PMI-ACP Sample Questions

Listed below are 20 sample exam questions, which are aligned with topics on the PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline. People studying for the PMI-ACP exam should find them useful practice. The answers and accompanying explanations are provided at the end of this post.

1) Which of the following is an Agile Manifesto principle?

A) Welcome changing requirements, early in development. Agile processes handle changes for the customer's competitive advantage.

B) Welcome changing priorities, early in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

C) Welcome changing priorities, even late in development. Agile processes handle changes for the customer's competitive advantage.

D) Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.



2) When managing an agile software team, engaging the business in prioritizing the backlog is an example of:

A) Technical risk reduction   

B) Incorporating stakeholder values   

C) Vendor management   

D) Stakeholder story mapping   



3) Which of the following items is not a benefit associated with product demonstrations?   

A) Learn about feature suitability   

B) Learn about feature usability   

C) Learn about feature estimates
   
D) Learn about new requirements   

PMI-ACP Book Discount

I picked up a copy of my PMI-ACP^SM Exam Prep book on a visit to RMC Project Management over the weekend. It was good to see it printed up for the first time, and with all the exercises and 120 sample exam questions, it was thicker than I expected at over 350 full-size pages.

The extra weight also comes from the case studies of agile projects I have worked on over the years and the additional materials I included to link the exam topics together. These items that are not in the exam are clearly marked so you can skip over them if you want. However, I am sure some people will find they add value by making the ideas more real. These additional materials also supply useful information to allow readers to fully understand the topics, rather than just memorize the information for the exam.

I am very grateful to the staff at RMC for pulling together my thoughts and ideas into this book, and for the people who reviewed it. Alistair Cockburn and Dennis Stevens were particularly helpful, and after reviewing it, they wrote the following quotes for the cover:

“As one of the authors of the Agile Manifesto, I am delighted to see this book by Mike Griffiths. It is great that such an exam guide was prepared by someone with a deep understanding of both project management and Agile development. Personally, I hope that everyone reads this book, not just to pass the PMI-ACP exam, but to learn Agile development safely and effectively!”

– Dr. Alistair Cockburn, Manifesto for Agile Software Development Co-Author, International Consortium for Agile Co-Founder, and Current Member of the PMI-ACP Steering Committee.

“This is a VERY enjoyable book to read, due to Mike's firm grasp of the underlying concepts of Agile, and his articulate and entertaining writing style. My favorite part is the fact that it is organized into a framework that helps all of the Agile concepts hang together, so they will be easier to recall when taking the PMI-ACP exam.

But Mike's book is more than just the best PMI-ACP prep book out there. It is also the best consolidated source of Agile knowledge, tools, and techniques available today. Even if you are not planning on sitting for the PMI-ACP exam in the near future you need to buy this book, read it, and keep it as a reference for how to responsibly be Agile!”

– Dennis Stevens, PMI-ACP Steering Committee Member, PMI Agile Community of Practice Council Leader, and Partner at Leading Agile.

Thanks to you both, working with you over the years has been a blast. I would also like to thank the visitors of my blog here, too, for reading my posts and submitting insightful comments that kept me motivated to write. RMC has provided me a limited time promotion code that gives readers a further $10 off their currently discounted price for the book. If you follow this link and enter promo code “XTENMGBD”, you can get the additional $10 discount up until May 18th 2012. This is a 25% reduction on the retail price.

Agile Conspiracies

Conspiracies can be fun. Based on just enough superficial evidence or correlation, they allow us to indulge our imaginations and let off some steam. But what happens if we stumble onto a hush-hush cover-up that we were never supposed to find? Is your system just slow today, or is there a key logger running? You better conceal that camera on your monitor (hey, it’s not being paranoid when everyone is out to get you!) We are about to explore some agile conspiracies, so get your cover-up ready...

1. Agile as a Means to Prevent Outsourcing

Outsourcing software development to smart people working for less money overseas loomed large over the IT industry in the 1990s as giants like IBM and Fujitsu opened mega data centers in India and China. Fortunately, a ragtag band of visionaries met in Snowbird, Utah to thwart the threat before it became a reality.

Understanding that detailed specifications and good plans allowed for work to be successfully handed off to third parties, they set about undoing these best practices. If they could successfully sabotage the building blocks of successful handoffs, then the outsourcing trend could be stopped--or at least slowed.

By insisting that customers did not know what they wanted (and couldn’t explain it anyway), they undermined years of progress in requirements specification and project planning. When challenged on these claims, they played their ace card by saying that since publishing their findings there had been no business groups complaining or refuting their findings--so they must be true (when in fact no one outside of the software world had any idea what agile was or that anything had been published). Yet without anyone to call “Foul!”, their message stuck and began to grow.

Some early adopters saw the end goal and jumped on the bandwagon, reinforcing the cause through their own findings; others blindly followed the new calling, thinking it made sense. Even the agile manifesto founders were amazed when the real benefits were not discussed at the first Agile Conference as more and more people joined the cause. Knowingly or unknowingly, the movement grew.

2. Agile as an Excuse to Avoid Documentation

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

"Calling Hallelujah Always Offends Someone"

I am glad the PMI is finally recognizing agile methods, Ken Schwaber recently posted about the PMI Agile Certification, saying that he “…welcomes this and looks forward to PMI shifting from its previous approach to an agile approach. The test of this will be, of course, the success of the projects that adhere to its principles. In the past, the success (or yield) of their predictive approach has been less than 50% of projects (on time, on date, with the desired functionality.)”

He was quoting from the Standish CHAOS Report that comes out every couple of years and documents the success and failure rates of IT projects. The CHAOS reports have been published since 1994, the same year DSDM appeared and when many agile methods were getting going. Each year the results vary slightly, but the general theme is that many IT projects are challenged and results like the following are typical:

    * 32%   Successful (On Time, On Budget, Fully Functional)
    * 44%   Challenged (Late, Over Budget, And/Or Less than Promised Functionality)
    * 24%   Failed (Cancelled or never used)
    * 61%   Feature complete

It is interesting then that Ken attributes the poor success rates of IT projects since the start of agile to be a PMI problem. You would think that with the rise of agile methods and the success of all these Scrum, XP, FDD, and DSDM projects we hear about, that these statistics would have turned right around!

Periodic Table of Agile Adoption

I created the following fun periodic table of agile adoption to explain some of the ranges of adoption, adaptation and blending that we see in the workplace.

 

The Model
On the left to right (X axis) we see varying ranges of agile purity to pragmatism. On the left we have the agile zealots and fundamentalists for whom everything must be done exactly by the book or it is just not agile and therefore wrong. On the right hand side we have the pragmatists who are happy to take what works for them and forget the rest.

On the vertical (Y axis) we have the degree to which people blend other techniques and practices into their work. Low on the scale people use a simple implementation of the theory they have adopted. High on the scale we see a complex blend of multiple practices; perhaps agile, with the Theory of Constraints (ToC), Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS), or their own in-house standards.

Agile Mythbusters Update

So we had our Agile Mythbusters session and it went really well. I was a little concerned that we would present a myth to the audience and there would be no discussion, debate or dialogue, just crickets chirping and tumbleweed rolling through. However, as normal, people were great and we had some good explanation and analysis of the myths.

After a warm up round debating the likelihood of the Calgary Flames making the playoffs (currently theoretically “Plausible”) we got started with “You cannot accurately estimate agile projects”. There was a good discussion about how we estimate agile projects and how in fact the feedback from iterations provides concrete evidence for better estimating. Yet the larger issues with accurately estimating something as intangible as software were highlighted.

We talked about if you changed the phrase from “You cannot accurately estimate agile projects” to “You cannot accurately estimate software projects” people were happier to label it as “Confirmed” so the debate was really about if agile software projects are easier or more difficult to estimate than traditional projects. Anyway, after nearly 30 minutes on the first agile myth we wanted to move on, so we labelled this one "Confirmed" and continued.

“Agile will increase Quality” was the next one and we had some frank discussion about the poor quality agile projects that occur. Like many things “it depends” was the consensus. Clearly there are opportunities for improved quality, but often a lack of discipline prevents these opportunities from occurring. So in the end “Agile will increase Quality” was labelled  “Plausible”.

Next up was “Since empowered teams self organize and self-select work, the role of the project manager goes away”.  This one was not contentious and several useful lists of project manager roles were generated. Our most unanimous myth decision, “… the role of the PM goes away” was "Busted".

The last myth we debated was “It is very difficult to negotiate contracts for agile work”.  This triggered some interesting accounts of contracting and the goals of suppliers and buyers. Many people struggle with agile contracting and are not aware of all the work done in this field. I was looking for a topic for this month’s “Agility Now” newsletter at Gantthead.com so I wrote up an account of agile contracting that may be of interest if this is an issue for you.

Anyway, it was a fun session and thanks to Mike Haden and Janice Aston for facilitating.

Agile Mythbusters

I like myths and have written on Leadership Myths previoulsy. For our next Calgary APLN Meeting we are hosting an Agile Mythbusters discussion. The idea being to debate some agile myths and through group discussion determine if they are Busted, Confirmed, or Plausible.

Now, likely an APLN audience might have a little bias, since the “A” in APLN stands for "Agile", but I hope that since we have cross posted the invitation to the local PMI group we might even things out.

Through my teaching for the PMI I get to hear many questions and rebuttals to agile’s claims and I think it is good to question benefits and have an honest reality check from time to time. Some of the myths proposed for discussion so far include:

•    You cannot accurately estimate agile projects
•    Agile methods promote scope creep
•    It is very difficult to negotiate contracts for agile work
•    Agile projects cannot be tracked with earned value
•    Agile projects employ counter intuitive planning practices
•    Stage gates don't work for agile projects
•    Agile methods avoid accountability
•    Agile projects are cheaper
•    Without specifications you do not know when you are done
•    You would not allow a housing contractor to proceed without a clear plan and estimate, why develop SW this way?
•    Agile scales naturally
•    Agile teams are happier
•    Since empowered teams self-organize and self-select work, the role of the project manager goes away
•    Agile methods erode the gains made towards recognizing SW development as a serious engineering discipline
•    Agile methods ignore enterprise architecture
•    Agile is quicker


Please send me your own agile myths for us to discuss. We will be choosing 5-6 to run through at the meeting. If you are in Calgary on January 26 please join us for the session. Registration details here at the Calgary APLN site.

If you cannot make it in person, I will write up some findings and publish them here later.

Agile Star Quiz

 
So you think you know agile? Well then why not take the Agile Star Quiz and find out if you are really an agile star or more of an information black hole. The questions in each category start out easy, but get harder. Score yourself either manually with the answers shown below or use the attached Excel Agile Star Quiz and scoring model spreadsheet to generate your agile star graph scores.

History
1)    The Agile Manifesto was created at a meeting at:
     A) A rugby match, Auckland, New Zealand, February 2001
     B) A ski resort in Vail, Colorado, February 2001
     C) A ski resort in Snowbird, Utah, February 2001
     D) The OOPSLA software conference, 1999

2)    The last three “Agile 20xx” North American agile conferences have been held at:
     A)  2010 Orlando, 2009 Chicago, 2008 Toronto
     B)  2010 Nashville, 2009 Salt Lake City, 2008 Toronto
     C)  2010 Salt Lake City, 2009 Orlando, 2008 Washington D.C
     D)  2010 Orlando, 2009 Chicago, 2008 Washington D.C

3)    Who published the statement “Software development should be done incrementally, in stages with continuous user participation and replanning”?
     A)  Kent Beck, 1997
     B)  Harlan Mills, 1976
     C)  Ken Schwaber, 2001
     D)  Jeff Sutherland, 1995

Six Project Trends Every PM Should be Aware Of

As we start 2010, the second decade of the 21st century, project managers really should be embracing 21st century technologies and approaches. While developers and other project members have been benefiting from improved communication and collaboration via new technology in the last 10 years, project managers have been slower to adopt them.

The plus side of being a late adopter is that most of the kinks get ironed out before you experience them and all the features you may need have probably already been developed. So, time to get with it. Perhaps it can be a New Year’s resolution to at least examine these tools and approaches if you are not already using them on your projects.

The World Has Changed – Why Haven’t Your PM Tools and Approaches?
In the last 10 years many changes have occurred in the world of managing IT projects, yet we still see the same tools and approaches being employed. Is this because they are classic and timeless? Are the traditional PM approaches so successful that they do not need to be dragged here and there following trends and immature technology fads? No, I fear it is more that people are creatures of habit, and the usually more mature project management community, are worse than most at evaluating and adopting new approaches.

Also, project management is a largely individual activity, teams of developers and business analysts are far more common than teams of project managers, so peer-to-peer learning and tool support is almost nonexistent for project managers. Plus, project management can often be a reputation based market and to some people fumbling around as a beginner in a new approach is very uncomfortable to them. Well it is time to get over it, this is how we learn anything, and if you are concerned about looking foolish, just imagine how foolish you will look when everyone else has moved with recent trends and you are in the last stand of dinosaurs.

Scrum, Bikram Yoga and The Attention Economy

What do Scrum and Bikram Yoga have in common? They both cater for the attention economy. Humans derive a lot of their sense of security and confidence, what psychologist Albert Bandura calls “self-efficacy,” from predictable routines. Without these predictable routines we can feel uncomfortable and uncertain.

 

I was talking to a colleague, Mike McCullough, last week who was creating agile training materials and quick-start templates to help organizations adopt agile. I was teasing him on the irony of creating prescriptive templates to guide people through an adaptive process that should probably be tailored for each project. He agreed, but pointed out that definitive models (even if not optimal) are much easier to sell than open-end frameworks requiring adjustment and set-up.

 

This is true, known entities create buying confidence. Comforted by the certainty (or less uncertainty) of a well defined approach our mental search for predictability is satisfied. Plus, really, which is easier to explain and sell to sponsors:

1. We are adopting Scrum, it has two-week iterations, a Product Owner role, and work prioritized in a Product Backlog.
2. We will select a hybrid of agile and traditional approaches, based on project and organizational characteristics, and selectively add and subtract approaches based on stakeholder feedback and project performance.

 

Even if option 2 is better, it sounds so fuzzy and nebulous that frankly as a sponsor, I am not sure what I am buying into.

 

Scrum

At the heart of Scrum is a simple process, obviously a great deal of skill is required to make it successful in challenging environments, but the underlying model is simple and this is a great strength. Scrum is the fastest growing and most widely used agile method, due to this simplicity. It can be quickly described, the rules are clearly defined, and there is a certainty to the process guidelines that (regardless of whether they always really apply) satisfy our urge for completeness and certainty.

• There are clearly defined activities (Release Planning Meeting, Sprint Planning Meeting, Daily Scrum, Sprint Review)
• Sprints are fixed time periods, traditionally 30 days, but now many teams use 2 weeks
• Only Certified Scrum Trainers can deliver Certified Scrum Master training courses

Bikram Yoga

Bikram Yoga is a form of hot-yoga developed by Bikram Choudhury. It caused some controversy when the 26 postures were pursued under copyright and wide-scale franchising occurred. The whole commercialization of yoga for personal profit seemed, well, un-yoga -ish and spawned the “Yoga, Inc” documentary and terms like “McYoga “.  Regardless of the controversy, it has been amazingly successful. With over 600 studios worldwide, it is the fastest growing form of yoga.

• All classes perform the same 26 Postures
• Classes are always 90 minutes in length and conducted at 104F
• Only certified Bikram instructors can run Bikram hot yoga classes

The Attention Economy...

PMBOK v4 and Agile mappings

For the attendees of my recent Las Vegas course, below is a link to the PMBOK v4 to Agile mappings we discussed. My previous course material mappings were based on PMBOK v3, and before that the 2000 edition, which are out of date now.

 

Quite a lot changed from the PMBOK v3 to v4; all the processes were renamed into the new verb-noun format. Six of the old processes were merged into four new ones, two processes were deleted, and two new ones added. So it seemed like time to redo the mappings and post them online this time.

 

Cautions

Process guidelines and templates are not an acceptable replacement for common sense, thought, dialog, or collaboration. A fool with a tool is still a fool, but can be especially dangerous since they give the impression that they have a potential solution to tricky problems. Beware of simply following any project guidelines that seem counter to your objectives.

 

So, why would you want to be mapping the PMBOK v4 to Agile techniques anyway?...