PMI is short for Project Management Institute, a not-for-profit American organization for project-management professionals worldwide. PMI organizes internationally recognized certification exams, including the PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP) certification. This certification demonstrates that you have deep knowledge of Agile principles and are skilled in applying Agile techniques. The certification covers all the major Agile approaches, including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD). To get the PMI-ACP certification for the first time, you must pass a 120-question multiple-choice exam within three hours. After passing it, you then need to regularly attend Agile-related professional development courses to maintain your certification.

The PMI-ACP certification is solid evidence of your knowledge, skill, and real-world experience as part of an Agile team. As more companies adopt Agile methodologies, there’s more demand for people who can help support Agile projects. Typical in-demand Agile roles include Scrum master, Agile trainer, project manager, Agile coach, and business analyst. Companies looking to fill these roles prefer to hire someone who can prove that they already know how Agile works and how to be part of an Agile team. A PMP-ACP certification is one way to prove not only your skills in Agile but your potential to take on a leading role in an Agile project.

Before pursuing a PMI-ACP certification, you should learn about Agile practices in a course. In fact, PMI requires you to have at least 21 hours of Agile training before obtaining the PMI-ACP certification. This could be through an online course in Agile, and some online courses are even tailored to help you prepare for the PMI-ACP certification exam. Also, you should keep in mind that the PMI-ACP certification exam covers all the major Agile approaches. So, if your work experience is just in one or two approaches, you should take a course on the other approaches to make sure you’re well prepared for the exam. Finally, the PMI-ACP certification also requires proof that you’ve had a certain amount of general project management experience as well as Agile project experience. Therefore, you should make sure to learn how to correctly document your project management and Agile experience over the years.