PMI-ACP Exam Prep Masterclass: Agile Certified Practitioner

Define valuable deliverables by applying value driven delivery in agile projects, using vertical slicing to deliver incremental value and clearly define acceptance criteria for each backlog item.

Tailor agile by adjusting sprint length and borrowing xp and tdd. Use paired programming and demos with scrum of scrums to manage team size and customer feedback.

Deliver value in small increments by releasing MVPs or minimum marketable features, gathering fast customer feedback, and funding future releases through early ROI while refining the product backlog.

Prioritize the backlog to welcome changing requirements and maximize customer value, using techniques like Kano and Moscow with input from the product owner and stakeholders.

Identify and engage stakeholders through agile collaboration with sponsors, teams, and users. Educate them about agile, address fears, and sustain transparent, short 2–4 week iterations.

Foster agile collaboration by driving participatory decision making among stakeholders, using techniques like one person, one vote; thumbs up/down sideways; and fist of five to reach convergence.

Define your agile project charter to specify goals, stakeholders, and a high-level mission, then use lightweight modeling, wireframes, and personas to align expectations and validate success.

Emphasizes two-way, face-to-face communication and transparency in agile status reporting, using collaboration games and workshops to share charter, sprint goals, release plans, risks, and forecasts with stakeholders.

Plan at multiple levels by embracing adaptive rolling wave planning and progressive elaboration. Plan upfront and replan as MVPs and iterations reveal new information, keeping stakeholders aligned.

Explore timeboxed iterations and development sprints, from iteration zero setup to hardening iterations, and learn how spike iterations (architectural and risk-based) drive fast failure to validate approaches.

Agile replaces absolute estimates with relative sizing using story points and Fibonacci numbers, and techniques like affinity estimation, wide band Delphi, and planning poker improve speed, accuracy, and bias avoidance.

Lead agile teams by aligning sponsor, product owner, and scrum master to coach, establish team norms, and ensure the right mix of hard and soft skills for delivering value.

Learn how agile teams avoid bottlenecks by using generalizing specialists and swarming, enabling self-organization, faster sprint completion, and stronger team cohesion and morale.

Co-locate teams to enable osmotic communication, visible boards, and shared norms, and use caves or distributed stand-ups with video cameras, conference phones, and digital task boards to stay aligned.

Visualize progress with burn charts, burn down and burn up, and the velocity tracking chart to stabilize velocity and forecast project completion amid scope changes.

Identify threats through brainstorming, assess probability and days of work lost, and calculate total risk exposure to keep agile projects on track.

Agile practices mitigate risk through flexible delivery and regular stakeholder feedback, using a risk register and risk burndown chart in sprint planning to track owners, mitigation actions, and visibility.

Adopt kaizen-driven retrospectives to drive continuous improvement, review what went well and what to change, and tailor processes to add value through daily stand-ups.

Demonstrate your deliverable by regularly showing work to stakeholders through sprint demos and product demos, inviting feedback to refine backlog and align with the agile product vision.

Encourage agile teams to generalize by building skill backups and learning new areas through shadowing and pair programming; use a skill chart or cops to self-organize around continuous learning.

Lean identifies seven wastes, such as partially done work, extra processes, and defects. Use value stream mapping to reduce non-value-added time and boost efficiency in agile teams.