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   

Free PMI-ACP Webinar

Please join me on Wednesday May 2^nd for a free webinar on “PMI-ACP: Adopting Agile into the PMP World.” This is part of Rally Software’s webinar series and we already have >2,000 people signed up. The session runs on Wednesday May 2^nd at 7am (PT) / 10am (ET) and then again at 1pm (PT) / 4pm (ET) You can sign up here. 

In the webinar I will be talking to Juie Chikering about the exam’s content, who it is aimed at, it’s positioning in the industry, and how it has changed since the pilot last year, amongst other things. There will be interactive poles and questions from the audience, so it should be an interactive and informative event.

I will be presenting the webinar from the RallyOn Conference in Boulder, CO where I am also speaking about agile PMOs and on a panel with Dean Leffingwell, Johanna Rothman, and Alan Shalloway about the future of agile. I am really looking forward to it and also spending some more time in Boulder which I especially enjoy.

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.

PMI-ACP Book Coverage

I finished my PMI-ACP Exam Preparation book a couple of weeks ago and now it is with the publishers for reviews and final edits. It turned out larger than expected, but I think better for the extra exercises and sample exam questions.

When designing the PMI-ACP^SM exam, we needed to base the content outline on existing books and resources so that candidates would understand what the exam would test them on. When choosing the books, we went back and forth on our decisions of which books to include, since there are so many good resources available. And while we recommend that people learn as much as they can, we also had to recognize the need for keeping the exam content—and the preparation process for the exam—reasonable. In the end, we selected the following 11 books:

1.    Agile Estimating and Planning, by Mike Cohn
2.   Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, Second Edition, by Jim Highsmith
   
3.   Agile Project Management with Scrum, by Ken Schwaber
   
4.   Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great, by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen
   
5.   Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game, Second Edition, by Alistair Cockburn
   
6.   Becoming Agile: ...in an Imperfect World, by Greg Smith and Ahmed Sidky
   
7.   Coaching Agile Teams, by Lyssa Adkins
   
8.   Lean-Agile Software Development: Achieving Enterprise Agility, by Alan Shalloway, Guy Beaver, and James R. Trott
   
9.   The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility, by Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick
   
10.   The Art of Agile Development, by James Shore and Shane Warden
    
11.   User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development, by Mike Cohn

Reading all of these books takes some time, since the 11 books add up to more than 4,000 pages. The books also cover a lot more material than you need to know for the exam. From each book, we extracted the portions that best covered the exam content outline topics, and the exam questions were then targeted at those specific sections.

PMI-ACP Exam Prep Material

My PMI-ACP Book is coming along nicely and today RMC released some more content including sample questions and walked through explanations of the answers. Visit the RMC Site to access it and also sign up for future previews and special discounts.

Now if I could only write this stuff as quickly as they are giving it away, I would be doing OK! 

PMI-ACP Steering Committee

I am currently in Miami at the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner Steering Committee Meeting. We have been reviewing the pilot program that just wrapped up and discussing proposed changes for the full program when it gets rolled out next year.

The pilot has been a success with 7,654 applications being opened which far exceeds other PMI specialized certifications offered to date. These came from 114 countries with the top 10 by volume being:

1. US
2. India
3. Canada
4. Brazil
5. UK
6. Australia
7. Sweden
8. Germany
9. Singapore
10. Switzerland

Overall 75% were already paid PMI members, and 70% were PMP credential holders.



Some of the changes we discussed (that are not approved yet) including extending the agile project experience qualification period from 2 years to 4years, change some of the questions from “Hows?” (e.g. NPV, IRR) to “Whys?” and tone down the software references.

Other work that will occur between now and when the certification gets reopened in January 2012 will include scoring the questions from the pilot. Questions that had a statistically higher set of people getting them wrong will be examined. As too will questions that people who otherwise did well on the test, seemed to struggle with. These poor performing questions will be swapped out with new ones and augmented by the new questions now coming out of the second round of question writing.

As always the best part has been catching up with everyone, always worth the journey.

PMI-ACP Value Stream Mapping

I have been away attending the excellent “Agile on The Beach” conference recently, but when I returned I had an email waiting requesting some PMI-ACP study help on Value Stream Mapping. So here is quick outline of the topic.

Value Stream Mapping – is a lean manufacturing technique that has been adopted by agile methods. It is used to analyze the flow of information (or materials) required to complete a process and to determine elements of waste that may be removed to improve the efficiency of the process. Value stream mapping usually involves creating visual maps of the process (value stream maps) and progresses through these stages:
1)    Identify the product or service that you are analyzing
2)    Create a value stream map of the currant process identifying steps, queues, delays and information flows
3)    Review the map to find delays, waste and constraints
4)    Create a new value stream map of the future state optimized to remove/reduce delays, waste and constraints
5)    Develop a roadmap to create the future state
6)    Plan to revisit the process in the future to continually tune and optimize

To illustrate lets optimize the value stream for buying a cake to celebrate passing your PMI-ACP exam with a friend. Let’s say this involves choosing a cake, waiting at the bakery counter to get the cake, paying for the cake at the checkout, then unpacking and slicing before enjoying the benefit of the process (the cake).

Value Driven Delivery

(This post, a draft sample from my upcoming PMI-ACP Prep book, takes a look at the “Value Driven Delivery” domain.)

Value, specifically the delivery of business value, is a core component of agile methods. This concept is woven into the agile DNA with its inclusion in the Agile Values (“Working software over comprehensive documentation”) and the Agile Principles (“Working software is delivered frequently” and “Working software is the principal measure of progress”). The focus on delivering value drives much of the agile activities and decision making on a project, and it manifests itself in many of the Tools and Techniques (T&T) and Knowledge and Skills (K&S) used. The focus on value is such an essential component of agile methods that the “Value Driven Delivery” domain has the most T&T and K&S of any of the 6 domains. This means we are starting with the biggest section early in this book.

What Is Value Driven Delivery?
Let’s start by defining value-driven delivery. The reason projects are undertaken is to generate business value, be it to produce a benefit or improve a service. Even safety and regulatory compliance projects can be expressed in terms of business value by considering the business risk and impact of not undertaking them. If value then is the reason for doing projects, value driven delivery is the focus of the project throughout the project planning, execution, and control processes.

It is the big picture view, the wearing of the sponsor’s hat when making decisions. By the project manager and team assuming this viewpoint, there is an opportunity to incorporate unique technical insights, such as technical dependencies or risk reduction steps, into the selection of features for a release that the sponsor may not be aware of. However value driven delivery remains a guiding vision for much local decision making, the selecting of choices that maximize the value delivered to the business or customer.

Risks as Anti-value
Risks are closely related to value. We can think of project risks as anti-value, i.e., things that can erode, remove, or reduce value if they are to occur. If value is the heads side of a coin, then risks are the tails side. To maximize value we must also minimize risks, since risks potentially reduce value. This is why the Value Driven Delivery domain addresses many risk reduction concepts and techniques.

RMC's PMI-ACP Exam Prep Book

I am excited to announce I will be working with RMC to create a PMI-ACP Study Guide book for the upcoming PMI Agile Certified Practitioner exam. When I was studying for my PMP exam many years ago, I used Rita Mulcahy’s PMP Prep Study Guide and was very grateful for the plain English explanations, exam guidance, and sample questions. So it feels right and a bit of a privilege to be working with the same company to help guide people for this new exam.

Working with the other PMI-ACP Steering Committee members over the last couple of years on the Agile Community of Practice and to define the exam has been a great experience, but the hundreds of hours of unpaid volunteer time has to be made up somewhere so hopefully this endeavor will help out. Assuming people still buy books that is, I read this Guardian article today that made me wonder. Anyway, embracing today’s publishing ideas; I will be posting snippets here for anyone looking for taster portions. The big picture views, sample exam questions, and cheat sheets will be kept for the main book, but key concepts around the tools and techniques, knowledge and skill areas will be posted here.

I would love to hear your feedback on these portions, please let me know if they are useful, need more explanation, or you think I am missing anything. I can then develop additional material to improve the final product. To help collect all my PMI-ACP content together (and exclude it for those of you not interested) I have created a Category tag called “PMI-ACP” and you can use the Categories filter under “Recent Posts” in the right hand navigation on my LeadingAnswers.com home page to find content.

PMI Agile Update

Here is an update on the agile happenings at the PMI that I have been involved with. The pilot program for the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner filled up fast. 2,649 people opened applications for the program, a record for the PMI, and the full launch in October is looking like it will be very popular. Item writing for the exam questions is on track and Registered Education Providers (REPs) are in high-gear readying their courses.

The PMBOK v5 Guide continues to move forward too. My work is on Chapter 6 (Time Management) and we recently reviewed and incorporated the second round of approved comments. There was a meeting this weekend to review all chapter comments along with the updated Inputs, Tools, Techniques, and Outputs (ITTOs). I have suggested some agile content I am not able to discuss under the NDA, but I am hopeful it will survive the approval process. Other Chapters have agile content being suggested too. This is a slow process though and the PMBOK v5 Guide is not expected until late 2012.

I was also recently contacted about working on an Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide. This really excites me and is something I looked into leading a few years back (before I discovered the full extent of the work involved). There has been a call for Agile experts to help develop the new extension.

If you have ever looked through the Extension to the PMBOK Guide for Construction, you will know that the extension does more than add a bunch of industry related practices. It also suggests changes to the existing PMBOK’s outlines. So, for instance, instead of creating a detailed WBS, we could suggest creating a candidate feature backlog. Many of the suggestions for change to the PMBOK Guide have to be tempered with the fact that the guide has to remain industry agnostic and suitable for any project manager. An extension for the Software Industry allows us to go much deeper into agile techniques. I am looking forward to this work and learning who else is involved.

Finally the PMI Agile Community of Practice continues to grow and develop. I learned that Michele Sliger’s recent webinar had over 500 people in attendance. This is great and a sign of the levels of interest for agile present in the ever expanding PMI community. Taking agile to the PMI that used to have this “evil empire” feel felt audacious eightr years ago, now it seems natural and if anything, belated. People have strong opinions and the PMBOK Guide work has shown me that many people still dismiss agile methods, but it feels like the tide is coming in and neither King Cnute or the diehard traditionalists will stop it.

PMI Agile Cert to be called “Agile Certified Practitioner”

It turns out the original suggestion of “Agile Project Practitioner” (PMI-APP) was too close to “App.” as in an Application or phone app to easily trademark (in this case service mark). So the name will now be “Agile Certified Practitioner” ACP as in Fred Blogs, PMP, ACP.

The timeline for people wanting to apply will be:
•    May 23rd    - Launch of application to Public
•    Mid July    - Pilot Participants can schedule exams at Prometric test centres
•    September 15    - Pilot Program Testing begins
•    November 30    - Pilot Program Testing Concludes
•    January 1    - First set of individuals that passed the exam are notified.

I am getting lots of questions about the content of the exam, so I thought I would present a couple of ways of interpreting it. In my last post on this subject I showed the box model for reconciling the Domains with the Knowledge & Skills (KS), and Tools & Techniques (TT).

Here is a version with the KS and TT’s listed:

 
(click on any of the images above or on the continuation page to see a bigger version)

Inside the PMI’s Agile Certification Examination Content Outline

The PMI has now published the Agile Certification Examination Content Outline, you can download it here. It outlines the “Tools and Techniques” and “Knowledge and Skills” areas that the exam will be broken into. As we have it now, 50% of the examination marks will be awarded for Tools and Techniques and 50% for Knowledge and Skills.

 

As part of the Steering Committee it was interesting to take part the discussions around these weightings. As recent as a month ago the split being suggested for the exam weighting was 70% of the exam would be based on Tools and Techniques with just 30% on Knowledge and Skills. We had steering committee members suggest a 60, 40% split the other way, but in the end the 50%, 50% split was selected.

       

Doubtless people are reading through these categories trying to get a handle on the scope of the exam. My recommendation would be to focus less on these divisions (that overlap anyway) and focus on the domains that underpin them.

As an example we see Knowledge and Skills Level 1 mentions “Building Empowered Teams”,  Level 2 has “Building High Performance Teams”, and the Tools and Techniques section has items for “Communications” including “daily stand-ups”  and “collaboration”. These are obviously all closely related, but listed in separate areas which could be confusing,  but if you adjust your view to focus on the domains, there is a better separation into logical areas.

 
I am hoping that there will be a reissue of the Examination Content Outline, since the current form needs word-smithing. The text we generated for it was our short hand notes. For instance Domain 1 Task 1 reads:

“Define features and project work in terms of end-user and stakeholder value by focusing on maximizing value delivered and minimizing non-value-added activities in order to keep the delivery team focused on maximizing the value developed.” Is quite the mouthful that made sense to us, but could perhaps be restated along the lines of:

“Define project features and work items in terms of end-user and stakeholder value, by always looking for and clarifying the business value. Focusing on maximizing value delivered by the project and try to eliminate any non-value-added activities. This keeps the delivery team focused on maximizing the business value and reduces the likelihood of wasteful activities, feature bloat and gold-plating.” While this is longer, hopefully it is in easier to absorb chunks.

Anyway, as the categories evolve and the questions get developed I will keep readers updated here.

PMI Agile Work

It has been a busy week for PMI Agile work. Last week I was in San Antonio with the PMI Agile Certification Steering Committee reviewing the latest market research and next steps for the certification launch. Things are also moving forward on the PMBOK v5 Guide with some more agile terms defined and content suggested for Chapter 6.

The PMI recently sent a detailed Agile survey out to a sample of its members and received feedback from >1,300 people. They were looking for feedback on the types of project managers using agile and their adoption of the domains and knowledge areas that comprise the Domains and Knowledge & Skills that will be in the exam.

Nearly 60% of the respondents were from the US with Canada, India, and Brazil being the next most popular. Not surprisingly the biggest industry sector was in IT, with Finance and Consulting being well represented. Most had 2 or more years’ agile experience and had participated in 4 projects or more in a leadership role. 80% held PMP certifications and nearly 30% CSM certifications.

One of the aims of the survey was to ask for rankings of the Techniques, Tools, Knowledge and Skills that will form the body of knowledge  that the exam is based upon. I would love to share these categories here but have been asked not to until after the official release on April 15th. This is understandable, and only fair, but once they are publicized I will have plenty to say about them.

I am sure the 1500 or so PMI Registered Education Providers  (REPs) along the Scrum CST’s who will be offering exam preparation courses will be having a busy Spring and Summer.

Meanwhile on the PMBOK v5 Guide, each of the chapter teams are busy completing the initial chapter re-writes ahead of integration and review. I have been surprised at the rigour and constraints imposed on the writing. Due to the guide being translated into a dozen languages, readability and consistency is key. As, for instance, on our latest effort one PMI reviewer commented that the Microsoft Word 2007 Readability Statistics show a Flesch Reading Ease score of 26.6, which is considered to be "very confusing" and "not easily understood by college graduates". A score between 60 and 70 is largely considered acceptable. So we have rewritten chunks and tried to simplify.

The increased accommodation of agile content is great, not just in my chapter, but I am  hearing  about agile content for the other chapters too. When the call for feedback goes out we will get to see what has been incorporated. I will publicize it here and encourage people to review the new PMBOK v5 Guide for agile content and suggest where more can be added – if appropriate.

That’s the update for now, stay tuned for more on the certification categories after the PMI reveal. Rest assured since we had a great mix of Agile Manifesto authors, PM experts, and pragmatic agilists working on it I don’t think people will be disappointed.

More Details about PMI’s Agile Certification

The new PMI Agile certification will come on stream in two waves. The first is the pilot program starting in May where participants get the chance to sit the 120 question, multiple choice, 3 hr exam and instead of pressing the dreaded “Submit” button at the end, they will be advised 10-12 weeks later. This long wait is to allow the PMI to score everyone in the pilot and then calibrate the cut-off scores.

For enduring the wait, and I guess being guinea pigs in the process, pilot participants will receive a 20% refund on the exam fee bringing the cost to members of $435 down to $348. To qualify to sit the exam participants must satisfy the following criteria:

• High school or equivalent education
• 2,000 hours general project management experience within the last 5 years (if you already hold a PMP you can forget this since you had to prove that for your PMP)
• 1,500 hours agile project management experience working on agile project teams or in agile methodologies within the last 2 years. These hours are in addition to the 2,000 hours required in general project management experience
• 21 hours agile project management training

 

The full certification program will be publically available in the third quarter of 2011. To maintain the credential you must earn 30 PDUs every 3 years in agile project management and these hours would also count toward fulfilling PMP requirements.

 

PMI Unveils Agile Certification Program

The PMI took the wraps off their new PMI Agile Certification program today. If that sounds like an oxymoron then take a closer look. There have been a growing number of agile sessions at PMI conferences over the last 6 years and an entire agile track at the last PMI Global Congress. The PMI reports that 65% of its members are involved in IT projects and Gartner are predicting agile will be used by 80% of software projects by 2012, so the demand is huge. My PMI SeminarsWorld course is popular not because anyone wants to see me, but instead the demand is high for information on how to run agile projects within PMI based organizations.

I have been working with the PMI on the program for about 18 months now, but muffled under NDA contracts so it is nice for it to be out in the open. Doubtless there will be criticism against the whole idea of certification and then again about an agile certification from the PMI. I thought long and hard before agreeing to participate, but then committed enthusiastically. Two things were clear to me.

1. The PMI had a big elephant in the room. Many IT projects were using agile methods and project managers were offered little guidance from the PMI on how to incorporate such endeavours.
2. The PMI were committed to providing a knowledge base, training options, and a certification program with or without me. If it was going to happen anyway, I wanted to be on the inside trying to steer it in the right direction rather than on the outside wondering if it might suddenly take a left turn.

Fortunately others felt the same way and the core team of steering committee has a wealth of grass roots agile knowledge. With Agile Manifesto authors and industry experts, we have a great pool of agile knowledge feeding into the design. Plus for some of us it was not the first go round of defining an agile project management certification. Mike Cottmeyer  and myself were engaged on the APLN effort that morphed into the DSDM program and is now quite popular in the UK. The PMI-APP materials, training and certification will provide people with vetted information based on practices found to work in these hybrid environments.

While the routes taken by agile and PMBOK methods can appear very different to the lay person (explore and validate versus plan, plan, plan) both approaches have the same ultimate destination of successful projects and satisfied stakeholders. Tools and techniques that help determine the appropriate level of planning and introduce agile team benefits are vital tools for today’s project manager’s toolbox.

While certifications do not assure competence or capability to manage projects, they are a useful learning tool for people new to the domain. In this role I welcome the certification for the training and awareness it will bring to this important and expanding field.

I am especially pleased by the quality of the agile thought leaders engaged in the design and evolution of the program. By having expert contributors from the agile field, the risk of misapplication by the uninitiated, or rejection by the agile community should be reduced (but not eliminated).

So for me it is not so much about the certification, but hopefully the training materials, studying and increased awareness of successful adoption strategies it should bring. 

What do you think? I would love you hear your thoughts…