PMI - ACP ( agile certified practitioner ) fixed. Another one to talk about

After four months of struggle, lethargy, procrastination, laziness, i'm a certified ACP an agile certified practitioner. I managed it with proficient in both tools and techniques, knowledge and skills. This is the plan i used to conquer.

• Bought agile prepcast . Why i went with Cornelius and prepcast have two reasons: I used prepcast during PMP and I liked it and also thought it was very useful. I'm couldn't find a better tutorial searching online. I didnt want to do a boot camp because it doesn't give me the freedom to rewind what is been taught and also it’s shitty pricey. Also i dont get to learn it in my pace 

          Deepfriedbrainproject has a good review of agile prepcast. I still consider said all that its still one of the value for money online tutorial for acp.

• Finished prepcast and got the eligibility to obtain 21 contact points.

• Filled in Application form. It’s pretty simple if you have a PMP. Still as a backup I contacted my managers and just ensured their email address and contact details and kept them informed I will be taking ACP. Just to stay alert in case my form goes in for an audit. 

• Bought PMI-ACP Exam Prep of Mike Griffith from amazon. I found it the cheapest there. Kept aside 3 weeks for finishing it. But then plans don’t work. It took me 7 weeks to finish it with all my travel, relocation, lethargy and procrastination. The book is nice and far simple than Rita Mulcay. It’s one of the most concise, precise books you can find in market for ACP. I wanted to buy Andy Crowe as well. However this time around I decided not because I did it last time for PMP and in the end I never read it. Few comments worth saying about Mike Griffith book is it’s an easy read. Practice exams are very very few and easy. Details of agile methodologies scrum, xp, lean, Kanban, are minuscule.

• Booked dates for the exam with a 2 weeks gap for taking a few practice tests.  The number of practice exams is way to less. Talking about practice exams, sorry to say this, but there aint any good online practice exams I came across. I think I almost took each and every free/ test exams available online and I would not recommend an OK or even worth a look on any of them, for the exam. (The only one I missed is velociteach) Now here is something I might again contradict, 1000+ PMI-ACP Practice Questions, Christopher Scordo is worth some time. I decided to go for it after reading one of the comments from this group. It has around 400-500 useful questions. It also makes you think and tests your concepts on Agile. Cons, I agree many questions are repetitive and some questions are not much of use. 

       Free online copy available if you hold a PMI membership. Search in eReads and books of PMI with pmi-acp as the search text. I also read I a few reviews that velociteach practice exams is quite good.

• A day before the test day, decide to drive to the exam center, an believe me that was the most wisest thing I ever did in my entire preparation. The exam center I selected was National Academy for Research and Development ( NARD ) Al Gurg Tower3 Regga Al Butten Dubai 47567 . We drove around for an hour but just couldn't locate a building called Al gurg tower. Neither google maps nor gps nor blackberry map was any use. We just could not locate the building. Finally we parked our car and decide to walk around. In short Al gurg tower is right behind the clover creek hotel apartments or Marriot apartments there are a by-lane which goes inside. At the end of the by-lane is Al gurg tower. Easy way to locate this building is it has “ADNIF” written on the ground floor.

• Reached center on the day, and gave the exam. A few tips for the exam day and carry two id’s: 1 photo id and one non- photo id. Second for sure carry a light jacket. 3 be prepared for a noisy exam center. I was the only one for the exam, and there were a few people talking all throughout the exam in the corridor.

Topics of questions were, Agile manifesto, Scrum, XP, Lean, kanban Estimation (there were questions on cost estimation) roles and responsibilities, burndown charts, brainstorming, EVM, velocity, value based analysis, risk, Coordination,Risk adjusted backlog, Persona, Wireframe,Self Organizing team, conflict (not the levels of Mike Griffith), planning poker, backlog, value based prioritization,Retrospective, Affinity Estimating, estimations, Risk based Spike, Iteration & Release planning, Osmotic Communication,Definition of Done,Ideal time, Progressive Elaboration,Minimal Marketable feature,Story Points,Agile ceremonies. Some elusive topics where scrum of scrum, automated code coverage tools, technical debt, cost estimation. 

Below link contain bookmarks to some of the links which i referred and free sample questions online PMI - ACP. Lately i have been hearing reviews about agileexams, so you might want to check that too.

ACP study reference bookmarks and sample question links
Download these html to view as bookmarks. If you directly open you would see only the html contents. How to screenshots below.

Click on the download button as seen in the screenshot. The downloaded file is an html.

My five 5 cents: CWF CMF WCCSS R - My representation of Agile manifesto principles. 

• Customer, Welcome change, Frequent.
• Collocated, Motivated, Face2Face 
• Working, Constant, Continous, Simplicity, Self Organised
• Reflection.