PMI-ACP Training for Project Professionals

Why PMI-ACP Training?

Today’s businesses are as diverse as the people running them, but they all operate in today’s business environment which is always changing, fast-paced, and customer-driven. In that environment, traditional project management approaches are often too cumbersome to adapt fast-enough to evolving customer needs. For many organizations and project teams, agile offers a better way to deliver projects and add value.

Although often referred to as a methodology, Agile is actually a framework or collection of methods, including SCRUM which is the most commonly used Agile approach.  In response to the increasing interest in Agile, the Project Management Institute® developed the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®) certification. This is a great professional development opportunity for project managers looking to increase their versatility as project professionals.

Agile Framework vs. Traditional Project Management

Adopting Agile is an organizational commitment and involves many substantial changes to the project environment, such as empowering project team members, modifying the role of the traditional project manager, considering colocation for team members, and transparency of progress, risks, and issues.

Agile project management is referred to as change driven as opposed to traditional project management which is plan driven. Traditional project management emphasizes the development of a detailed project plan and managing changes to the plan and the work being done. With Agile, small chunks of work are delivered to the customer in iterations or increments and the team adjusts their work according to how the customer responds.

As opposed to traditional project management in which scope drives what will be required for resources of time and cost, in an Agile environment, resources of time and cost determine how much will get done in each increment or iteration.

Agile principles and practices are typically used for software development projects, but project managers of all types of projects tailor Agile to their projects and organizational needs to the benefit of their stakeholders.

PMI-ACP Certification Requirements

In order to qualify to take the PMI-ACP exam, an applicant must demonstrate the following:

General Project Experience	2,000 hours working on project teams (Current PMP® or PgMP® holders will not need to submit hours for this requirement) These hours must be earned within the last 5 years
Agile Project Experience	1500 hours working on agile project teams or with agile methodologies These hours are in addition to the 2,000 hours required in “general project experience” These hours must be earned within the last 3 years
Training in Agile Practices	21 hours of training in Agile practices

Whether you are looking to develop your organization’s fluency in Agile or simply expand your repertoire of project management tools, the PMI-ACP may be the right certification for you!

Read more about Agile and PMI-ACP Certification.