The new PMI-ACP certification

I'm rather torn by the advent of this certification. On the one hand, this certification may help the project management community at large embrace or at least better understand Agility and not dismiss it as anarchy with no documentation. On the other hand, how do you fit Agile, a different way of thinking and understanding in to an over prescribed, PMI-ism’s heavy ‘way’?

Can you test a person’s understanding of Agility in a multi-choice exam? Certainly Scrum rules have definitive answers but the soft skills of coaching cannot be tested in this way. This is one of the inherent problems with PMI testing, multi choice really does not show an understanding of the subject matter rather than an ability to remember answers.

The Agile Alliance Certified Scrum Professional (CSP) certification can only be taken a year after the CSM is attained and is based on written answers to broad questions designed to discover if the applicant understands  more than the written rules of Scrum but has experienced and hopefully overcome some of the many hurdles along the way. To me, this type of certification is far more valuable as it demonstrates to some extent experience and capability.

Another thing that has me torn is the source material for the exam. Rather than a single Body Of Knowledge the exam is based on 9 books from various authors on various Agile subjects.

I’m certainly pleased that PMI has chosen (so far) not to create their own version of Agile terminology and process as this would in my opinion kill the very nature of Agile itself. On the other hand, as someone in the pilot program for the certification, digesting 9 books by 9 different people with 9 different viewpoints is a daunting task.

So, what is the right solution for testing Agile knowledge? I really don’t know. Dissertation style exams certainly have more value for me over rote memorization but I doubt this is a viable solution for such a large organization as PMI due to the time and people needed to read and grade these papers. Is the certification valuable? Time will tell, however, PMI is a huge, global organization with a lot of influence.

One thing is for sure, this will be an interesting ride. I will post further my experiences of studying for and taking this exam.