My Experience preparing for, taking and passing the PMI-ACP? certification exam (November 2020)

Hi all! I found many people from all around the world interested on taking the PMI-ACP? examination (which is great to make our community bigger!) and contacting me for suggestions and advices about a study approach, materials used, and so on. In this article I will summarize my personal experience, hoping is useful for you on achieving this goal too.

I will focus on the preparation and the exam experience itself. Beside of this, you may want to be familiar with the PMI's application process, Code of ethics, etc (not a big deal, this information is normally reviewed during the formal training, contact hours course as the one described below.)

Why I do this? This certification is an amazing, challenging and interesting experience, and some people may need additional information, independently of the journey stage they are currently at. After all, Studying is knowledge work -we want to share and collaborate with others, right?

Disclaimer: Just in case, this is only my personal experience with updated information by Nov 2020, and should be used only as a reference. I cannot guarantee you will succeed with it, but hopefully will give you insights about what it is all of this and how to get on it =)

Materials I used

First of all, I got the following materials:

• @Mike Griffiths ' PMI-ACP? Exam prep book 2nd Ed (2018) (found it on Amazon.com. Can also be purchased on Rita Mulcahy's rmcls.com site) -may be referenced below as "the book"
• @Joseph Phillips 's "PMI-ACP? Exam Prep for PMBOK 6" Udemy course. Joseph owns instructing.com, a PMI's REP company. In case you are selected for an audit from PMI, you can get the 21 contact hours certificate from this course.
• Determination to succeed is a must.

Study approach

Basically I followed my PMP? certification approach. In this case, read the PMI-ACP? Exam prep book once to both get familiar with the 7 Agile Domains, terms and ideas and also to acquire the mindset and most important concepts just from the beginning. Didn't take the chapter quizzes yet (as Mike suggests)

The second time I read the book was a little different. I read each Domain chapter more carefully than the first time (making sure that the coarse-grained knowledge from the first read was decomposed and understood :) ). I also made two page summaries for each chapter, by hand, which is challenging because of the amount of information - with the most relevant ideas and concepts. At the end of each chapter, I took the chapter quizzes and at the top of that, watch the corresponding chapter lectures from Joseph Phillips' course. I took this approach for the 7 domains. At this point I was very familiar with the concepts and had build very valuable material by myself for further review.

The last thing (maybe the last one or 2 weeks before the exam) was to sharp the concepts by taking quizzes and simulators. Questions in the examination are situational, so instead of memorize, you need to absorb the concepts and what they represent in real-life project situations. The important thing here is that every time you get a wrong answer, review the detail and explanation of the question. Mike's book comes with additional materials in rmcls.com site - including a 60 questions simulator, and also the Joseph Phillips' course includes a 120-question exam simulator at the end to measure your understanding and preparation. Beside of those, there are also free, good quality quizzes and simulators online. I can recommend the following:

• Leading answer's site Mike Griffiths - free sample questions
• Cornelius Fitchner's ACP prepcast free 7-days access exams (3 quizzes of 20 questions each)
• Izenbridge free questions
• Simplilearn PMI-ACP? free simulator
• PMtraining

It can be a good idea and I do recommend to get a premium simulator - to both practice and get familiar with the experience of a 3-hour, 120 questions examination.

Beside of taking quizzes and exam simulators, I read the summaries I made for each chapter to internalize the concepts. I did it every day and even the day of the exam.

Taking (and Passing) the PMI-ACP? Exam

At this point I was comfortable with the concepts. Now the challenge was on a 3-hour, no break, 120 tough questions.

Although I could take the exam from home, I preferred to take it a local examination centre here in Monterrey, Mexico. I also preferred to take the exam in English (not my native language) because of the concepts, ideas and terms transparency (Knowledge work - lower hand offs). Maybe not the best option, but part of the risks I personally prefer to take.

Before the exam you are required to left all your belongings into a locker. I planned to take my watch with me to measure time vs answered questions, which was no possible because it also was required to be kept into the locker. So at the start I had to come up with a parametric table of questions answered / remaining time, based on the timer in the Exam User interface.There is also an optional tutorial to understand the controls in the user interface, I recommend to take it, just in case.

During the exam: Don't let the exam intimidates you!! Since the beginning, you will find hard questions. You need to read each question carefully, get the details, and read the answers to select the BEST choice, or in other escenario the LEAST WORST one. It's a 3-hour, subjective exam with sometimes confusing questions. You may feel you are uncertain about your answers. Just keep moving forward with it, be confident with you and the effort you did studying to get it. Be aware of the time running and answer the questions as fast as you can.

After the exam: And right after the exam, you will see a confirmation screen with your results -hopefully saying "Congratulations!! You have passed the ACP? examination". After that, you can take an optional survey about your experience. Before you leave the test centre, don't forget to request your results on a printed sheet of paper, just in case.

Summary

I hope this information is useful to you to pass the ACP? exam. In my personal experience, the ACP? examination was a little bit harder and subjective than the PMP? exam! It's a hard, long process, but remember that if it were easy, everybody would get the certification, right?

Be determined on your study process and confident during the exam. Good luck!!

Feel free to share your comments or insights: do you agree with my study approach for the ACP?? what can be improved? have other tips for candidates about to take the ACP? exam?

#SoyPMINL #PMIMexico #PMILatam #PMI