TOPIC: Passed *New* PMI-ACP Exam September 2015

Hi, I wanted to thank Cornelius & Team for the wonderful work on the Agile Prepcast and give some feedback about my study and exam experiences.

Having been qualified to take the exam 9/2014, I spent a year informally studying for the ACP exam. I attempted to meet with two other co-workers for study sessions but the majority were moved or cancelled due to our workload and schedules. I purchased an agileexams.com membership and when we did meet, we practiced questions in study mode.

Time flew by and I realized the 1-year date to take the exam or pay the exam fee again was fast approaching. I decided to dedicate a week-long staycation at home to prep for the exam, as I just couldn't find dedicated time between work and family. That was the best decision. Next best decision, was the purchase of the Agile Prepcast, which is comprehensive in agile principles among the various flavors of agile (XP, Lean, Scrum, etc). There are so many modules, all wonderful. If I were to do it all over again, I would dedicate 4-weeks to going through all of the Agile Prepcast podcasts slower. In my case, I studied literally from waking to bedtime for a week, inclusive of the Agile Prepcasts, practicing agileexams.com in study mode, buying the Certkiller.com PMI-ACP study questions, and searching for videos covering content from the newest reading selections suggested by PMI for the new version of the PMI-ACP exam.

In summary of study guides, I would highly recommend the Agile Prepcast (giving plenty of time to go through all podcasts at an enjoyable pace), agileexams.com was worth its weight in gold in study mode, and look for videos/presentations of suggested reading by PMI. Certkiller was a waste of money and doesn't compare to agileexams.

As for the new exam, I took it 9/11/15 when it was in a blackout period. That means I had to wait to receive my results via email sometime before mid-November. My results came via email after 17 days as Passing! It was a very tough exam. On many forums I read people said how much easier the PMI-ACP exam was to the PMP exam. I cannot say that on the newest version of the PMI-ACP test; it was very tough, just didn't have all of the formulas that the PMP exam had (when I took it 10 years ago) and this PMI-ACP test was only 3 hours, whereas my PMP test was 4 hours. I needed 2.75 hours for the PMI-ACP test, with my last hour for reviewing question I flagged to come back to.

Exam format - all multiple choice with usually one answer clearly wrong and not fitting the question scenario, then it was a battle of ideals depending on how the question was worded in which agile discipline. If you thoroughly know, for each agile discipline (XP, scrum..), what each role plays on that team, what they are responsible for, the founding principles for that discipline, & cadence/ceremonies practiced in each discipline you will be able to remove another one or two wrong answers for each question. The Agile Prepcast gives you all of this information.

Where it is easy to trip up is when you have extensive experience in waterfall SDLC, then I was tempted to answer the questions with my PMP hat on, not my Agile hat on. I had to re-read and re-read questions saying if I were the Agile Coach/PM/SM, not the PMP project manager, what would I do. There were a large number of situational questions about things that did not go well, were not the 'happy path'. Things where if you knew which person should have that responsibility, or what the founding principles were for that discipline you could answer the question.

Best of luck to each of you looking to pass your PMI-ACP exam. - Kim