PMI-ACP – Agile Tools & Techniques AND Knowledge & Skills (TTKS)

To pass PMI-ACP you need to know the requirements of the PMI-ACP exam outline. In the exam, you will be tested 50% on Tools & Techniques and 50% on Knowledge & Skills. This post includes high level information of all the requirements.

[wc_highlight color=”red”]10 AGILE TOOLS & TECHNIQUES MATRIX[/wc_highlight]

TnT	Includes
Agile Analysis & Design	1. Agile product roadmap 2. User stories / backlog 3. Story maps 4. Progressive Elaboration 5. Wireframes 6. Agile project chartering 7. Personas 8. Agile modeling
Agile Estimation	1. Parking Lot Chart 2. Relative Sizing 3. Story points 4. Ideal Time 5. Buffer 6. Wide band Delphi 7. Planning Poker 8. Affinity Estimating 9. Local Safety
Agile Communications	1. Information Radiator 2. Team Space 3. Agile Tooling 4. Osmotic communication 5. Daily Standups
Agile Metrics	1. Velocity 2. Cycle Time 3. EVM 4. Escaped Defects
Agile Product Quality	1. DoD 2. Verification & Validation 3. TDD 4. ATDD 5. Continuous Integration
Planning, Monitoring & Adapting	1. Retrospectives 2. Kanban boards / task 3. WIP and WIP limits 4. Time boxing 5. Release planning 6. Iteration planning 7. Burn down chart 8. Burn up chart 9. Process tailoring
Agile Risk Management	1. Risk Adjusted Backlog 2. Risk Burn Down Charts / Graphs 3. Risk-based Burn Up Charts 4. Risk-based Spike
Soft Skills Negotiation (Interpersonal Skills)	1. Emotional Intelligence (EI / EQ) 2. Collaboration 3. Negotiation 4. Conflict Resolution 5. Adaptive Leadership (Situational Leadership) 6. Servant Leadership
Value Stream Analysis (Process Improvement)	1. Value Stream Mapping
Value Based Prioritization	1. ROI / NPV / IRR 2. Compliance 3. Customer-valued prioritization 4. MMF

[wc_highlight color=”red”]3 LEVELs OF KNOWLEDGE & SKILLS[/wc_highlight]

Level 1 (65%) 40 questions	Level 2 (25%) 14 questions	Level 3 (10%) 6 questions
1. Active listening 2. Agile manifesto 3. Agile principles 4. Assessing and incorporating community and stakeholder values 5. Agile brainstorming techniques 6. Building empowered teams 7. Coaching and mentoring within teams 8. Agile communications management 9. Feedback techniques for product (e.g., prototyping, simulation, demonstrations, evaluations) 11. Incremental delivery 12. Agile knowledge sharing 13. Agile leadership tools and techniques 14. Prioritization 15. Agile problem-solving strategies, tools and techniques 16. Project and quality standards for Agile projects 17. Stakeholder management 18. Agile team motivation 19. Time, budget and cost estimation 20. Value-based decomposition and prioritization	1. Agile frameworks and terminology 2. Building high-performance teams 3. Agile business case development 4. Collocation (geographic proximity)/distributed teams 5. Agile continuous improvement processes 6. Elements of a project charter for an Agile project 7. Agile facilitation methods 8. Agile participatory decision models (e.g., input-based, shared collaboration, command) 9. PMI’s code of ethics and professional conduct 10. Process analysis techniques 11. Self-assessment 12. Value-based analysis	1. Agile contracting methods 2. Agile project accounting principles 3. Applying new Agile practices 4. Compliance (organization) 5. Regulatory compliance 6. Agile failure modes and alternatives 7. Globalization, culture, and team diversity 8. Agile innovation games 9. Principles of systems thinking (e.g., complex adaptive, chaos) 10. Control limits for Agile projects 11. Variance and trend analysis 12. Variations in Agile methods and approaches 13. Vendor management

[wc_highlight color=”red”]Agile Tools & Techniques AND Knowledge & Skills Mapping[/wc_highlight]

Domain	Tools/Techniques	Knowledge/Skills
Agile principles & mindsets		1. Agile manifesto and principles 2. Agile framework and terminology 3. Agile Methods and Approaches
Value-driven delivery / Project initialization	1. ROI, NPV, IRR 2. Chartering 3. Relative prioritization 4. Customer-valued prioritization 5. Risk-adjusted backlog 6. Agile EVM 7. Task/Kanban boards + WIP limits 8. Cumulative flow diagrams 9. Value stream mapping 10. Requirement reviews 11. KANO analysis + MoSCow	1. Prioritization 2. Value-based decomposition and prioritization 3. Incremental delivery 4. Value-based analysis 5. Business case development 6. Agile project accounting principles 7. Agile contracting
Stakeholder engagement / communication	1. Personas 2. User stories / Backlogs + Story maps 3. Wireframes 4. Information Radiators 5. Burn Down/ Up charts 6. Agile modeling 7. Conflict resolution + Negotiation 8. Workshops 9. 2-way communications 10. Social media-based communication	1. Accessing & Incorporating community & Stakeholder values 2. Stakeholder management 3. Communication management 4. Facilitation methods 5. Knowledge Sharing / Written communication
Team perf / HRM	1. Servant leadership + Adaptive leadership 2. Co-located teams / Distributed teams 3. Team space 4. Agile tooling + Daily stand-ups 5. Emotional intelligence 6. Learning cycle 7. Productivity	1. Leadership 2. Building agile teams 3. Team motivation 4. Physical and virtual co-location 5. Global, culture and team diversity 6. Training, Coaching & Team diversity 7. Participator decision models
Adaptive Planning / Executing	1. Product roadmap 2. MMF / MVP 3. Iteration and release planning + Progressive Elaboration 4. Wide Band Delphi & Planning poker + Affinity estimating + Relative sizing / story points 5. Timeboxing 6. Process tailoring 7. Velocity + Ideal time + Throughput 8. Backlog Grooming / Refinement 9. Definition of Done	1. Principles of system thinking 2. Prioritization 3. Incremental delivery 4. Agile discovery 5. Agile sizing and estimation 6. Value-based analysis and decomposition 7. Agile project chartering
Problem detection and resolution	1. Continuous integration + Frequent verification and validation 2. Variance and trend analysis 3. Test-driven development / Test first development 4. Acceptance-test drive development 5. Risk-based spike 6. Risk adjusted backlog 7. Architectural spikes 8. Risk burn down graphs 9. Cycle time 10. Escape defects 11. Approved iterations 12. The five WHYs 13. Control limits 14. Pre-motern (Rule setting, failure analysis) 15. Fishbone diagram analysis 16. Testing (including exploratory & usability)	1. Problem solving 2. Process analysis 3. Regulatory compliance 4. Managing with Agile KPIs
Continuous improvement (Product, Process, People)	1. Retrospectives + Intraspectives 2. Product-feeback loop 3. Process tailoring / Hybrid models 4. Value stream mapping 5. Continuous integration 6. Kaizen	1. Developmental mastery models 2. Self-assessment Tools & Techniques 3. Continuous improvement 4. Agile hybrid models 5. PMI’s code of ethics and professional conduct

 

Good luck on the exam!