Tips for PMI-ACP exam and my journey!

Hello All,

Today I cleared my PMI-ACP exam and I am feeling on the top of this world! First of all I would like to thank PMZilla for creating this forum, where PMI-ACP aspirants can come and share their knowledge/experience and learn from each other. In fact this is one of the integral parts of agile called 'knowledge sharing'. All these days, I was a silent reader of this forum, browsing through the various posts and trying to know more about PMI-ACP. However, today I want to take the front seat and share my experience with you all, so that it will be useful to somebody who wants to clear PMI-ACP. 

Total prep time: It took me around 1 month total to prepare for my PMI-ACP. I use to spend around 1 hour each day (mostly late in the evening or at night) to study. Around 2-3 hours on weekends.

PDUs: I started off by taking a 'free' PDU session organized locally by a senior PMI member. I would say I was lucky enough to know about this session and took time off from my busy schedule to attend it. This session in fact inspired me to go further deep and think about actually appearing for the examination. However, I would suggest you can take any online training as well. since, I am CSM certified, I got 14 PDUs from the CSM training to which I added these 7 hours, which makes a total of 21 PDUs. You need total 21 PDUs to be eligible for PMI-ACP.

Books: I purchased 'PMI-ACP Exam Prep' book by Mike Griffiths from Amazon for about $60. Read it once throughly, solved the quiz at the end of each chapter. I use to get 5-6 wrong. I would say this is the ONLY book you need to read for the exam. In fact I am going to keep the book with me as a reference, since it has some really good points on certain topics. Before the exam, I read the book again, but this time on a high level, only focusing on parts which I didn't quiet understand.

Mocks: There are a few FREE mocks available online which are very close to the real exam. I would suggest trying out izenbridge and simplilearn.com mocks. They give a good feel of the real exam. It's upto you, if you want to spend some money and buy paid mocks. I didn't do that. But, you should give atleast 2-3 mocks before the exam. they say you need to score 85%, but I use to get around 60-65%

About the Exam: The exam is pretty straight forward. It has 120 questions and 3 hours. I feel like you can actually complete the exam in less that 1.5 hours. questions are not very tough and not very easy, just right in the middle. Few imp. keywords for the exam: Scrum (5-6 q), XP (7-8 q), Lean (5-6 q), product owner, scrum master, the team, velocity, user story, estimation, wideband delphi, planning poker, pair programming, refactoring, agile manifesto, product roadmap, daily stand-up, MMF, TDD, burn-down chart, ideal time, iteration planning, release planning. continuous integration, osmotic comm., information radiators 

Tips: 1. It's all about words in PMI-ACP. If any choice is saying like 'value', 'customer satisfaction', 'self-organizing' 'adaptive' 'progressive' etc. then that's the right answer! If you see words like 'command', 'control', 'assign responsibilties', 'direct the team', 'magament plans' etc. then it talks about traditional project management style and is definitely not the correct answer.

2. It needs to be always about 'the team', and not talk about single developer, analyst, tester. 

3. Remember the principles very well for Scrum, XP and Lean. Also, try to know the best or most effective of all. For example, in XP, maybe the pair programming principle tops the list!

4. Read about the roles for Scrum master, product owner and the team. Who is responsible for writing user stories, acceptance tests, resolve conflict, estimate user stories etc. 

5. Know the agile activity sequence in general: release plan, product backlog, iteration plan, user story development, review, retrosepctive, repeat.

It's good to give this exam now, since not many people know about it and it's still very new. Who knows they may change the syllabus and even make the questions more tough in the future. so, guys go for it! I really hope that all this info. will be helpful for your PMI-ACP preparation and surely, you will crack the exam like me really soon! All the best and happy learning!!

 

 

 

 

 

admin's picture

Very good post, thanks for contributing and many congratulations on your ACP certification.

Many congrats and thanks for sharing your detailed experience.