The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) Exam is pretty challenging (i.e., it is the equivalent of a PMP for agile project managers) ... 1. It's a little hit-and-miss right now, because there is no "body of knowledge" (like there is for project management, systems engineering, and other closely-related disciplines). a. PMI should have constructed an agile body of knowledge "before" designing an exam. b. As it stands, PMI outlines some "broad" criteria and recommended reading material (but little else). c. I definitely recommend a two or three day PMI-ACP prep course (if you anyone is interested in taking the exam to become a PMI-ACP). (However, students are subject to the individual whims, preferences, and biases of their instructor, i.e., most instructors are Certified Scrum Trainers so they'll have a "Scrum bias," which isn't bad but is probably insufficient for exam purposes ...) 2. Most of the questions are on "Extreme Programming--XP" (according to some strange interpretation). a. I know more about XP than Scrum, but I had never read Jim Shore's book ("Extreme Programming Explained" and "Planning Extreme Programming" by Kent Beck are obviously the authoritative texts on the original methodology, although XP has evolved substantially over the last 15 years, while "The Art of Agile Development" by Jim Shore is certainly an extended view of XP upon which the PMI-ACP is based). b. About 25% or fewer of my questions were based on specific Scrum practices, which kind of killed me (since my PMI-ACP exam prep instructor inundated us with Scrum for two days -- However, I did get a new respect for Scrum from him, as well as the old Scrum books I reread in a vain attempt to prepare for the ACP exam). c. There was a heavy emphasis, i.e., 20%+, on "Release Planning" (again, I'm very familiar with Release Planning according to its originators Kent Beck and Jim Highsmith -- However, I didn't know the answers to most of those questions either -- There were also a few abstract questions on "Lean-Agile Portfolio Management" that stumped me as well, considering I just finished reading Alan Shalloway's Lean-Agile book). 3. I went back and looked at Alan Shalloway's Lean-Agile book (so definitely check out his chapter on "Lean-Agile Portfolio Management," especially its benefits). a. I have the feeling that Jim Shore's book was really the key to this early version of the exam, since he was one of the principal organizers of PMI's ACP program. b. Obviously, reading both of Schwaber's books on Scrum is worthwhile, but insufficient alone (especially the appendices from "Agile Project Management with Scrum" that discuss roles, artifacts, responsibilities, etc.). c. The exam is also moderately influenced by Alistair Cockburn's, "Agile Software Development: The Cooperative Game," but not much (i.e., Alistair's books are somewhat voluminous at times -- The only relevant thing I remember from Alistair's book is the so-called, "Cone of Silence" and "Osmotic Communication" -- There was a question about "Use Cases" that I had no clue about, which must have come from Alistair's book, "How detailed should Use Cases be?" -- Until I took the exam I'd never heard that Use Cases directly apply to agile methods). Sally Elatta offers the most comprehensive PMI-ACP study tips I've seen to-date, which I discovered "after" taking my exam, http://agiletraining.com/2011/09/24/pmi-acp-agile-certification-exam-study-tips/# -- In hindsight, I was able to use Sally Elatta's PMI-ACP study tips as a lens to analyze my strengths and weaknesses -- There are a number of mistakes one can make when preparing for the PMI-ACP exam, i.e., satisfice and oversimplify the problem, underestimate the scope of the exam, don’t take the exam seriously enough, be overconfident and arrogant about taking the exam, focus exclusively on Scrum and ignore the odd collection of concepts we call the PMI-ACP body of knowledge, don't do due-diligence in seeking out additional materials, etc. -- On a lighter note, there are now three PMI-ACP prep guides available on the market, http://davidfrico.com/pmi-acp-books.txt ...