What’s New with PMI-ACP and How Does It Impact My Training?

PMI has recently announced a new direction for the PMI-ACP exam. It’s been over (10) years since the PMI-ACP exam was originally created and changes are definitely needed. Many people who are familiar with my Agile Project Management training may be wondering what I think of those changes and how it relates to the training I’ve created.

What Are the PMI-ACP Changes?

The new PMI-ACP exam contents are definitely worthwhile, but it’s been diluted from the original exam contents, and I’m disappointed that it doesn’t go far enough. Here’s a summary of what was announced:

Exam Content Changes

The biggest change is that PMI has announced a shift in the PMI-ACP exam contents from (7) domains to (4) domains. Here’s how that breaks down:

It’s very apparent from this that the exam contents have been diluted significantly. The new topics are much more limited, broader, and higher-level than the original exam contents.

Other Changes

Other changes to the PMI-ACP certification requirements are fairly limited and not very significant; however, the experience requirements have also been somewhat changed as shown below:

Prior Agile Experience Requirements	New Agile Experience Requirements
1500 hours working on agile project teams or with agile methodologies. These hours must be earned within the last 3 years	8 months of agile project experience within the last 3 years

What Questions Do These Changes Raise?

The key question it raises, is

• “How do these topics align with the role a project manager might play in an Agile environment?”
• It makes it difficult to design an exam test if you don’t know what specific role the exam is expected to qualify someone for and the role that a project manager might play in an Agile environment has been undefined for a long time and that is a major problem.

Does the shift in exam contents assume that if a project manager is involved in an Agile project at all, it will be at a higher level rather than being involved at a more detailed level of Agile execution? That appears to be the case, but you have to “read between the lines” to infer that.

What’s Missing?

For many years, there has been a convergence going on between:

1. An Agile approach that emphasizes flexibility and adaptivity to maximize business value in an uncertain environment, and
2. A more traditional plan-driven project management approach that emphasizes planning and control that is designed to achieve predictability over project costs and schedules for projects with well-defined requirements.

Agile originally started out as a revolt against project management practices at that time that were perceived to be overly cumbersome and bureaucratic. That created a lot of polarization between the Agile community and the project management community and many people viewed it as a binary and mutually exclusive choice between these two approaches.

Over the years since then, the polarization between these two communities has softened and people have begun to see the possibility that these two approaches might actually be complementary rather than competitive.

• The big challenge that introduces for project managers is learning how to blend these two approaches in the right proportions to fit a particular project.
• I’m disappointed that PMI does not appear to have addressed that challenge at all. PMI seems to continue to treat Agile and traditional plan-driven project management as separate and independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two.

Why Has This Been So Slow to Change?

We can only attempt to guess why this has been so slow to change, but a few possibilities seem apparent to me:

What Are the Obstacles to Change?

• PMI has a huge, vested interest in preserving the status quo. They have a strong revenue stream associated with existing certifications like PMP and are hesitant to make any significant new direction that might significantly change or invalidate those existing certifications.
• There are many training companies and consultants on both the Agile and project management side of things that also have a vested interest in preserving the status quo because they have made a big investment in training around the current approach.
• Many individual project managers associate their job security with a traditional plan-driven project management approach and are hesitant to venture into a new area where the role of a project manager may be very undefined.

This is a very big shift in direction for the project management profession. I’ve recently written about this in an article on “Reengineering Project Management“.

What Are the Change Management Requirements?

It will take some very bold leadership to bring about this kind of change and it is a huge change management problem. A focused change management effort is often needed whenever there is a significant and fundamental broad-based change in direction that some people may be likely to resist. In simple terms, there are three elements of any successful change management initiative:

1. “Burning Platform” – The expression “Burning Platform” comes from an incident involving an oil drilling platform in the North Sea near the UK. The platform was full of blatant safety issues that were ignored that no one did anything about until the whole platform was engulfed in a disastrous fire. What it illustrates is:
   • From a change management perspective, in many situations, people become comfortable with the status quo even though they know that it may be problematic and there needs to be some level of pain associated with the current situation that makes it untenable to sustain before people will make a significant change.   
   • The level of “pain” that PMI is feeling from this situation probably isn’t at that level yet.  Until industry and PMI members push on them to do something, they’re not likely to make a significant effort to change.
2. Vision for the Future – there needs to be a clear and concise vision of what the future will be like after the change is complete.  I’ve spent more than (10) years articulating a vision of “Agile Project Management” based on an integrated approach to project management that embraces both Agile and traditional plan-driven project management.  However, the terminology used to describe that direction may need to be refined:
   • Unfortunately, there are many people who think that “Agile Project Management” is nothing more than the level of project management that is already built into Agile and Scrum and won’t recognize that as a need for change. 
   • For that reason, I like the term, “Value-driven Project Management”. Value-driven Project Management is an alternative to a pure Plan-driven Project Management approach. In a value-driven approach, the most appropriate methodology or blend of methodologies is chosen to deliver the value required by the project. That could be a pure plan-driven approach, an Agile approach or a hybrid of the two.
3. Progress in That Direction – Any change like this involves a certain amount of risk and many people are risk-averse and are not likely to take the first step in that direction until someone else has gone first and led the way. I’ve tried to lead the way in that direction as much as possible:
   • I’ve personally managed a number of Agile Project Management projects to demonstrate that it can be done
   • I’ve documented a number of case studies in my books and training of both successful and unsuccessful projects
   • As of today, over 250,000 students have taken my training, and I’ve published four books on Agile Project Management. The most recent edition of those books is used as a graduate-level project management textbook in several universities.
   • I will continue in that direction, but I’m disappointed that PMI has not shown more leadership in this direction. Without stronger leadership from PMI, progress is likely to continue to be slow.

What’s the Impact on My Training?

I’ve developed a very complete Agile Project Management curriculum with over 250,000 students. I originally developed that training based on a vision of Agile Project Management and a university-level training curriculum I developed as an Adjunct Professor at Boston University around 2012-2013. Although the individual courses have grown significantly since that time, the vision of Agile Project Management that the training is based on hasn’t change significantly in over (10) years.

• I did not design most of my training around PMI-ACP certification; but I did ensure that my training covered at least all the material that was included in the original PMI_ACP exam.
• I am convinced that the vision behind that training is still sound; however, it is apparent that it will likely take a while for PMI to catch up with that vision.

For those reasons, I do not intend to make any significant changes to the majority of the Agile Project Management training I offer; however, there are two specific areas where there is some impact:

1. How to Prepare for PMI-ACP Training Course
   • There is one course entitled “How to Prepare for PMI-ACP Certification” that cross-references my Agile Project Management training courses against the contents of the original PMI-ACP exam.
   • I will discontinue that course, and I do not intend to replace it since the new PMI-ACP exam is much broader and much more general than the original exam.
2. Pluralsight Training Curriculum
   • I have developed a number of training courses for Pluralsight that is more directly related to the PMI-ACP exam, but even in that material, I went beyond what was in the exam and focused on a more general Agile Project Management perspective.
   • I do not have complete control of that material – it is owned by Pluralsight; and I’ll let Pluralsight decide what action, if any, is necessary with those courses.

Overall Summary

I’m disappointed in the latest changes in the PMI-ACP certification exam. I don’t think it goes far enough:

• The biggest issue is that it still treats Agile and traditional plan-driven project management as separate and independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two, and
• It does not provide any insight or direction to project managers on how those two approaches might be blended together as necessary fit a given project.

Another major criticism of the PMI-ACP certification is that it was originally just a general test of Agile and Lean knowledge and not related to qualifying someone to play a specific role:

• It is still not related to a particular role that a project manager might play, and
• It is very difficult to create any certification exam if you don’t know what role that it is designed to qualify someone to play.

However, even though I am disappointed in the scope and direction of those changes, they have little impact on most of my training courses because most of my training courses are based on an integrated vision of Agile Project Management that goes beyond PMI-ACP certification and that vision hasn’t changed significantly in over (10) years.