The document discusses the three major agile certifications: Certified Scrum Master (CSM) by Scrum Alliance, Professional Scrum Master (PSM) by Scrum.org, and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) by the Project Management Institute. It highlights the requirements, exam formats, and content of each certification, emphasizing the importance of the PMI-ACP as it encompasses a broader range of agile practices beyond just Scrum. Additionally, it introduces the Agile Practice Guide released by PMI, which outlines key concepts and practices for implementing agile methodologies.

1. The Big 3 Agile Certifications,
PMI-ACP Certification and
Agile practice guide
Abdelrahman Elsheikh Seedahmed
M.sc, PMOC,CBAP, PMP, RMP, ACP, PMI-SP,EVM,
CPRE, MCITP, MCTS, OCP, OCA, ITIL v3, CTFL,
ISO20000, ISO27002

2. Agenda
• The Big 3 Agile Certifications
• PMI-ACP Certification
• Agile practice guide

4. The Big 3 Agile Certifications
• There are 3 major certification bodies
today, and a growing number of smaller
ones.

5. #1 Scrum Alliance - Certified Scrum Master
(CSM)
• The Scrum Alliance is one of the oldest
and most popular certifications in Scrum.
• Founded in 2002, they have nearly a half
million current certificate holders for the
Certified Scrum Master or CSM
designation.

6. #1 Scrum Alliance - Certified Scrum
Master (CSM)
• Achieving the CSM is really easy, you simply need
to take a 2 or 3 day class from someone that has
been qualified as a Certified Scrum Trainer
(CST) by the Scrum Alliance.
• CSM training courses run on average between
$1,000 and $1,500 per person.
• After the class there is a 35 question, online test
that is pretty easy to pass.
• So the CSM is pretty easy to get and many people
have done exactly that.

7. #2 - Scrum.org - Professional Scrum Master
(PSM)
• Scrum.org was founded in 2009 by Ken
Schwaber, one of the co-creators of
Scrum and a co-founder of the Scrum
Alliance.
• Rather than simply requiring people to
take training, Scrum.org focuses on
testing people to make sure that they
have the knowledge.

8. #2 - Scrum.org - Professional Scrum Master
(PSM)
• By testing, I mean standard assessments of knowledge of
Scrum and the application of that.
• The assessment for the Professional Scrum Master or PSM
designation is 80 questions.
• The assessment costs $150 and allows you one attempt.
• To pass, you need to get a score of 85% or higher within 60
minutes.
• So technically it is an open book assessment but practically
speaking you need to master the material in order to pass.

9. #3 - Project Management Institute - Agile Certified
Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
• The Project Management Institute is no
stranger to the recurring revenue streams
created by certifications, with over 760,000
project management professional (PMPs).
• In 2012, PMI introduced the PMI Agile
Certified Professional (PMI-ACP) certification
and as of earlier this year, there were over
16,000 people holding the PMI-ACP
credential.

10. #3 - Project Management Institute - Agile Certified
Practitioner (PMI-ACP)
• The PMI-ACP is slightly different from the
previous Scrum certifications in that it
covers all of Agile, rather than being only
focused on Scrum.
• So you will be expected to know Kanban,
EXtreme Programming and Lean
Software Development in addition to
Scrum.

11. Agenda
• The Big 3 Agile Certifications
• PMI-ACP Certification
• Agile practice guide

12. Why the PMI-ACP Certification Is
Important
• First, it comes from PMI, an entity that is
well known and trusted by organizations
and their hiring managers for their
credential standards.

13. Why the PMI-ACP Certification Is
Important
• Second, the PMI-ACP exam is created by
agile experts for agile practitioners, and it
is not tied to a single agile methodology.

14. Why the PMI-ACP Certification Is
Important
• As a result, the PMI-ACP certification is well
positioned to become the new standard
for agile professionals.

15. Qualifying to Take the Exam

17. PMI-ACP Certification Fees

19. Exam Content
• Tools and Techniques (6 Categories):
– These are things you should be able to do.
– As a result, the exam attempts to test your ability
to apply them, mostly through situational
questions.
– Questions about tools and techniques make up
50 percent of the exam.

20. Tools and Techniques

21. Tools and Techniques

22. Tools and Techniques

23. Tools and Techniques

24. Tools and Techniques

25. Tools and Techniques

26. Exam Content and Domain
Breakdown
• As noted earlier, 50 percent of the marks
on the exam are awarded for tools and
techniques questions and 50 percent are
awarded for knowledge and skills
questions.

27. Exam Content
• Knowledge and Skills (3 Levels):
– These are things you should know.
– Therefore, the exam attempts to test your
recall of them.
– Questions about knowledge and skills make
up the remaining 50 percent of the exam.

28. The knowledge and skills
Breakdown
• The knowledge and skills section is further broken
down into three tiers:
• Level 1:
– There are 18 knowledge and skills in level 1.
– These are deemed the most important to know.
– Therefore, 33 percent of the overall exam questions
will test you on these topics.

29. The knowledge and skills
Breakdown
• Level 2:
– There are 12 knowledge and skills in level 2.
– Questions about these knowledge and skills
make up 12 percent of the exam.

30. The knowledge and skills
Breakdown
• Level 3:
– There are 13 knowledge and skills in level 3.
– These are given the least amount of emphasis
on the exam, making up just 5 percent of the
total exam questions.

31. The knowledge and skills
Breakdown

33. Exam Score Breakdown

34. Exam Content
• Domains (7 Groups):
– The exam content outline defines Seven groupings or
clusters of tools and techniques and knowledge and
skills.
– While you will not be specifically tested on the
domains, these groupings define how PMI intends the
topics to be understood and taught.
– The domains are useful uniting bonds.

36. Domain 1— Agile Principles and
Mindset
• This domain focuses on Explore, embrace,
and apply agile principles and mindset
within the context of the project team and
organization.

37. Domain 2—Value-Driven Delivery
• This domain focuses on maximizing
business value through prioritization,
iterative delivery, and risk management.

38. Domain 3—Stakeholder
Engagement
• This domain deals with understanding
stakeholder needs, getting them involved,
and keeping them informed.

39. Domain 4—Boosting Team
Performance Practices
• This domain links team-related topics,
including forming teams, empowering
them, building team commitment, and
promoting collaboration.

40. Domain 5—Adaptive Planning
• This domain deals with estimating,
different levels of plans, getting feedback
on progress, and updating plans.

41. Domain 6—Problem Detection and
Resolution
• This domain is concerned with
encouraging whole team tracking and
resolution of risks.

42. Domain 7—Continuous
Improvement (Product, Processes,
People)
• The final domain deals with how to
improve the process via retrospectives
and experiments.

43. References

45. The PMI-ACP® Exam Prep,
Second Edition
• The PMI-ACP® Exam Prep, Second Edition:
• A Course in a Book for Passing the PMI
Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®)
Exam by Mike Griffiths is considered by
many PMI-ACP® Exam takers as the
“official textbook of PMI-ACP® Exam”.

46. The PMI-ACP® Exam Prep,
Second Edition
• Mike Griffiths is the author who has the most profound
knowledge of the PMI-ACP® Exam unfound on the
market.
• In fact, he was one of the member of the PMI-ACP®
Steering Committee (the body that conceived and laid
out the structure and format of the PMI-ACP® Exam!).
• You will be assured of learning some first-hand “insider’s”
information on the PMI-ACP® Exam. Currently, he is also
a PMI-ACP® himself.

47. Agenda
• The Big 3 Agile Certifications
• PMI-ACP Certification
• Agile practice guide

48. Agile Practice Guide

49. Agile practice guide
• On 6th September 2017, PMI has release
Agile Practice Guide.
• Though the book does not cover all the exam
contents, gives a good starting point for the
PMI-ACP exam.
• Following are the sections of the book:

50. Introduction
• Introduction to the Document

51. An Introduction to Agile
• When and why we need to apply adaptive life cycle.
• It also talks about Agile Mind set (Agile Manifesto
mindset, values, and principles).
• It also covers the concepts of definable and high-
uncertainty work.
• It shows the correlation between lean, the Kanban
Method, and agile approaches.

52. Life Cycle Selection
• It explores the factors in selecting project life
cycle.
• It discusses various Life Cycles like Adaptive
Predictive, Incremental, Iterative, and Hybrid.
• This section also addresses suitability filters,
tailoring guidelines, and common
combinations of approaches.

53. Implementing Agile: Creating an
Agile Environment
• It primarily talks about how project manager role
gets changes in the Agile environment.
• The primary emphasis is on servant leadership and
team composition.
• It also discusses facilitator role, cross-functional
team, need of 'T' shaped professionals.

54. Implementing Agile: Delivering an
Agile environment
• It introduces many topics in summary form
like the retrospective, backlog refinement,
Sprint Review Demos, etc.
• This section includes information on how
to organize teams and common practices
that teams can use to deliver value on a
regular basis.

55. Organizational Considerations for
Project Agility
• It touches upon how we change the culture to support
Agility.
• This chapter also talks about contracts and procurements.
• It also focuses on various scaling frameworks.
• This chapter gives good detail of Agile PMO.
• This section explores key organizational factors that impact
the use of agile approaches, such as culture, readiness,
business practices, and the role of a PMO.

56. Call for Action and Appendixes
• It gives you an invite to raise your
feedbacks.
• The call to action requests input for
continuous improvement of this practice
guide.

57. In summary
• This guide does not provide in-depth
knowledge of Agile.
• But, yes, it gives a fair idea about how a
Project Manager can move towards
Agility.

58. Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Overall, it is good to see a document that
begins to attempt to wrap it's arm around
Agile.
• It is great that it covers not only Scrum,
but XP, Kanban, Lean and other
frameworks

59. Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• There is a focus on the Agile Principles, in addition to the
Values of the Agile Manifesto that are commonly mentioned.
• The idea of the Agile Mindset.
• Servant Leadership is a big and important topic in Agile
circles.
• In the appendix, Annex A3, the document includes an
overview of Agile and Lean Frameworks which was helpful.
• The Glossary of Terms is pretty comprehensive

60. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Earned value in Agile projects - PMI seems
to have some weird fascination with
Earned Value and they've included it in
this Agile Guide.
• I completely disagree, and I wish those EV
proponents would just drop it.

61. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Incremental and Iterative Development -
This is a minor point but I don't think
anyone treats these as separate
development approaches anymore.
• I know they are different, but most people
just do both together and don't talk about
it.

62. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Hybrid approaches - The description of
hybrid was confusing, as was the mixing
and matching of hybrid approaches.
• And personally, I don't think hybrid
approaches are effective and I wish people
would stop using them .

63. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Agile described as a subset of Lean - This is
a minor point, but, there is a diagram in
this book that shows Agile as being a
subset of Lean,
• with Scrum as a subset of Agile - I always
thought of Agile as the child or offspring
of Lean, not necessarily a subset.

64. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Project-Centric Focus: The idea that
everything is a project may not always be
helpful.

65. Not Good Things in the Agile Practice Guide
• Number of pages - This document is pretty big for the amount
of material it is covering.
• It only looks thin when compared to the PMBOK.
• I would encourage PMI to try to keep this document as lean as
possible (perhaps removing Earned Value and some of the
other things I mention above).
• The Scrum guide is a terse 17 pages and describes the Scrum
framework in it's entirety! Let's not create another 800 page
PMBOK - that wouldn't be very Agile.