1. Finalizing the PMI-ACP Exam Prep Course
Let’s talk about how to use this course. It’s about working smart to be smarter. Your goal in this course is to pass the Pmiacp exam and that’s also my goal for you. So let’s talk about how we both can work towards that. Now, I admit you have to do the bulk of the work, but your goal is the first step. So I want you to have a smart goal that they’re specific. You pass the Pmiacp measurable, you’re going to pass or fail. It’s pretty measurable, it’s attainable. You can do this. I have confidence in you. You can do this. You can make this happen. It’s realistic. Do you have the qualifications? Do you have the experience? If you do, then it’s realistic that you can do it.
You have the qualifications, you can get it done timely. This is up to you. You need to set a deadline. Don’t make that deadline three months from now, make it maybe six weeks max from now. So get this thing done. The longer you wait, the worse it’s going to be. So get this thing done. Let’s talk about a strategy for passing this. There are nine modules of learning and notice that in this last module is where I talk about how to use the course. And there’s a reason why. One, I wanted you to watch everything first. I wanted you to watch everything with an open mind and to absorb and to focus. Well, now I’m telling you to go back and watch it again.
Watch these videos, participate in the videos, do all the exams, do the games, do everything again two times. repetition is the mother of learning. So I know you feel great that you’ve reached the end of the course and that is a good thing. A lot of people don’t make it here. They’ve given up or been afraid of this and they’ve gone on to something else, but you have not. So now let’s commit to watching it one more time. Completing the course one more time. Have you been making your flashcards? Study the flashcards daily through, all the way through exam day. And then now is the strategy. All right, watch this. You’re going to focus on the most important exam domains.
Just like an agile, you focus on the highest value first. So do the same for your exam. Value driven delivery 20% way up high stakeholder engagement 20% also a very important one of our exam domains. Agile principles and mindset 16 team performance also 16%. So those four are your most important. Those four is where your value is. So value driven stakeholder engagement, agile principles, team performance those four, then the next three are low priority. Not saying they’re not important, they’re just not as important. adaptive planning 12% problem detection and resolution 10% continuous improvement 9% so you study accordingly.
Don’t spend all your time in continuous improvement, it’s only worth 9%. Spend the bulk of your time in the most important exam domains where you’re going to have the most questions. Work smart, not hard. Next, I want you, if you’ve not already, to create a place to learn. Create a place to work to learn. That’s hard to say. You want a place that’s quiet and clean, no distractions, no email, no text, no phone, no visitors, just like you’ll have in the actual exam environment. You need 2 hours of quiet time every day as you prepare to pass. Now, I know some of you are saying that’s impossible.
It’s not impossible, it’s just difficult. But if you want to pass, you don’t want this to go on forever, right? You want to get this over with. So right now, create a space that where you study that is not available to anyone else and where you live that may be not a reality. You got kids running around and your spouse or whatnot? A lot of distractions. All right, well, maybe you study at work or you study at the library or where you work. Figure out a way to put a curtain around you and put on some headsets, some sound blocking noise, stay up late, whatever it takes. And that’s really the attitude you need is whatever it takes that you want to get this thing done.
In my experience, both with the pmp, the project, plus the capm, and now with the acp, the longer a person takes to study, generally the worse they do an exam. I know that sounds weird, but you get to a point where the law of diminishing returns kicks in here. So you don’t want to take too long, but you also need to concentrate, and I mean a focus compressed time to study. So how long should you study? It’s going to be different by each person, but I would say no more than six weeks. Get this thing done and get on with your life. And so when you consider if you try to stretch this out, you have a constant interruption in your life.
If you can compress it and just do this for six weeks and get it done, you’re going to do better on the exam, you’re going to get back to your life and you’re going to earn this certification much faster. So don’t stretch it out. All right, I think you got that message. Let’s talk about completing the course. Now that you’ve gone through the course once, you can go back and take it in any order that you like. Maybe you already did this. You don’t have to do it in this particular order. Take notes this time if you didn’t the first time. I didn’t talk about that at all because I just want you to go through the course initially, how you feel, what you feel is best for you. Well, now I want you to go through the course, but take notes. So write down your notes and review those notes before you leave.
A module now, if you have a question, let me know. Some of you, I’m sure, have already done this. Others have been shy about it. But really, if you have a question, let me know. I’m happy to help. And then also look at the questions others have posted. There may be some good information in there. Well, I’m sure there is some good information in there. Prepare to pass is your goal. No, it’s not. Passing is your goal. So complete your application as part of this course. Create a deadline. And then once again, if you don’t understand a concept or a term, ask. All right, great job making it through this course. Now let’s go back and do it again and really absorb and really prepare to pass. I’ll see you moving forward.
2. Course Wrap and Your Next Steps
Congratulations on completing the entire pmi Act exam. Prep seminar. Way to go. Good job. I’m really happy that you made it to the end of this course. You’ve done something that a lot of people have not done and that is complete this course. So you’ve put in the time and the effort. You’re well on your way to passing the pmia acp exam. Let’s take just a minute and walk through all of the exam domains. Just a quick recap of what we’ve learned in this course as you prepare to pass the exam. So, first off, the agile Principles and mindset. Think agile and think value for the exam. This is 16% of the exam content, about 19 questions. Tied to this or the major theme we saw was the agile Manifesto.
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools. Working software over comprehensive documentation customer collaboration over contract negotiation. Responding to change over following a plan. Good job. Let’s talk about value driven delivery. So in this exam domain, also 20% of the exam, about 24 exam questions know this topic for agile success and exam success. So, key points on value driven delivery that projects exist to create business value. Your goal is to increase value and reduce risk. Value driven delivery has the most weight of all the Pmiacp exam domains. Whip. We talked about Whip, the work in progress. It’s also known as a work in process or work in plane.
Whip is risk. Whip can hide bottlenecks and then Whip requires an investment but doesn’t give us any return on that investment until that work is complete. So for that reason and some other reasons, we need to limit Whip stakeholder Management in agile projects, this is worth 17% of the exam. So about 20 exam questions stakeholder engagement objectives are going to work with the project stakeholders. Establish and maintain that shared vision, create and collaborate. So you want to create a collaboration between the team and all the stakeholders. Communication was a big portion that we talked about with this exam objective and then using those interpersonal skills, very important.
Another theme that we talked about really throughout the course is what does done mean? That defining done is important for everyone. So an example of a shared vision is what does done mean? And we had user stories, releases and final project deliverables. And for each one of those things we talked about what constitutes done, what has to be true for the user story, for the release, for the final project deliverables. Our next domain is Team performance. In team performance, this is 16% of the pmi acp exam. So it’s about 19 questions and it focuses on building high performing teams. Now, on the agile team, we had some different roles and we talked about the responsibilities.
So we talked about the development team or the delivery team, the business representatives, the product owner, the scrum master, the role of coach and our project sponsor in teams. Our goal was to have self directed teams or self directing teams where they’re empowered, they make local decisions, they can estimate and decide on the project work, and they make mistakes, but they also learn from those mistakes. With adaptive planning, this is 12% of your exam. So about 14 exam questions, and it was about sizing, estimating and planning. So some key tasks here we have progressive elaboration and rolling wave planning.
We aimed to have transparent planning. We manage expectations by refining our plans, adjusting our planning cadence based on project factors and other results. And then we inspect and adapt the plans to changing events. We talked about problem detection and resolution. This is domain six, and this was only worth 10% of your exam, about twelve questions. And we practice prevention, identification and resolution of threats and issues. So the four themes understand the problem, detect the problem, manage threats and issues and then solve problems. Also in this domain is where we introduced variance analysis, the difference between what was planned and what was experienced.
We talked about cost variances and schedule variances. But you might also have other key performance indicators or other items that you’re tracking where there could be a variance. Domain seven was continuous improvement for the pmia acp exam. So in this last domain it was talked about 9% of your test or eleven questions. People, processes and product was the primary theme. And then that allow us to generate insight to evaluate the data and then create insights based, based on the data. And that I do this activity with the project.
