Introduction to PMI-ACP
The good news is that the global IT spending, currently at staggering US$ 4 trillion, is expected to reach a record US$ 9 trillion by 2025. Gartner’s 2012 IT projects survey revealed that 20% to 30% of IT projects fail. This means that the project failed to meet its scope, time, and cost objectives. Two thirds of the failed projects fell short of their time and cost targets. Sheldon F. T. et al. (1992) discovered that approximately 45% of product features are never utilized! Johnson J. (2002) also reveals that project failures are often caused by requirements defects. We are now facing 20-50% changes in our requirements, i.e. high requirements volatility, in today’s fast-paced environment. All of these facts highlight the importance of project management and flexible requirements management. These facts also reveal the weaknesses in the traditional ‘waterfall-style’ software development lifecycle (SDLC). The waterfall model requires that requirements be frozen before we can start implementation, which is unrealistic. Customers who have high-level objectives didn’t understand the complex information technology (IT), requirements & design documents. They only get to see the product at the end of implementation, usually after several months. Customers are often shocked to discover a complete misunderstanding of their requirements and needs, which can lead to huge time and cost. Worse, the project may realize at the end that the solution is impossible to implement. Since the late 20th century, there has been a global effort to improve SDLC. The key features that all these SDLC methods had in common were Light weight (i.e. more emphasis on software development than building volumes of design documents and requirement documents).
Iterative software development (i.e., developing software in small
pieces over big bang development)
Customer was involved throughout the entire lifecycle (not only during requirements gathering and delivery, as in waterfall models).
At every stage of the project, be sure to focus on the customer’s value
Rapid Response to Change
These methods had a higher success rate, so the creators joined forces to create Agile in 2001. Agile stands for the various light weight methods. In 2011, the CHAOS manifesto recognized that agile projects have a success rate three times higher than waterfall. This brought cheers to both the customer and IT development community. Scrum, XP, FDD, Feature driven development (FDD), Crystal, Dynamic systems, DSDM, etc. are some of the most popular agile methodologies. Later, Kanban and Lean joined the agile family. There are many certifications available for specific methodologies such as Scrum, XP… and for roles like scrum master or agile coach, product owner, etc. However, the Project Management Institute in the USA has piloted the Agile Certified Practitioner PMI-ACP for the agile project management community. PMI-ACP discusses agile methods and the essential knowledge, practice, tools, and techniques that are used in them. This is useful for agile project management. This course gives you a head start in agile project management. It is not surprising that this course is becoming more popular than PMP(r). Join the ACP and network with agile Project managers around the globe. Srinivasan.V