PMI-ACP® Exam Study Notes

Synchronous collaboration

Example: Web-hosted meetings

Collaboration can happen synchronously where all participants view information and/or meet at the same time or asynchronously where participants view information and provide feedback at different points in time.

“Smell” in Agile

Example: if the coach has begun assigning work to the team, that might be classified as a “smell”

Agile smells are issues that might appear as something else on the surface. For example, if the coach has begun assigning work to the team, that might be classified as a “smell”. The underlying problem might be that self-organization has broken down.

Meta Scrum

Meta Scrum is a communication forum that is often used in larger projects that scale across multiple agile teams, for the purpose of coordinating resources and dependencies.

Agile Team Adaptation

Every team needs to constantly evaluate and make appropriate adaptations in the following four areas –

• Product Value,
• Product quality,
• Product status,
• Team performance

Reflective Listening

Example: you repeat back a summary of what the other person just said to you to confirm understanding

Reflective Listening is a communication technique where you repeat back a summary of what the other person just said to you to confirm understanding. Another benefit in this situation is that having the person hear their own ideas in another person’s voice/words may make it easier for them to be objective.

Multistage Integration

Multistage integration builds involve the running of additional tests for performance, load and stability.

DRY stand for:

This clever name for a well-known principle comes from Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt. Don’t Repeat Yourself is more than just avoiding cut-and-paste coding. Eliminating duplication decreases the time required to make changes. You need only change one part of the code. It also decreases the risk of introducing a defect by making a necessary change in one place but not in another.

Product Owner’s qualities:

• Committed,
• Responsible,
• Authorized,
• Collaborative, and
• Knowledgeable

Burn Rate

The burn rate reflects the labor costs for a given iteration and could be used to calculate future iterations.

Product Backlog Burndown report graphs

The Product Backlog Burndown report graphs remaining estimated workload over the course of the project. Workload at the start of each Sprint is measured by summing all open Product Backlog work estimates.

Cumulative Flow diagrams

Cumulative Flow diagrams is a tool for tracking and forecasting agile projects.

Design Spike

If you need to test an approach to your production code, Perhaps you want to see how a design possibility will work in practice, or you need to see how a persistence framework will work on your production code

Affinity estimating

Example: Rapid estimation work by assigning sizes such as ‘XS’ ‘S’ ‘M’ ‘L’ or ‘XL’ to user stories

This is a classic example of affinity estimating where the team compares their effort to something else they can relate to. Common usages include shirt sizes or coffee cup sizes.

Capability/Epic Story

An epic story is a large story that may span iterations. It is also known as a capability.

Hersey-Blanchard Situational Model

There is no “Best” leadership style. It can be categorised in 4 styles.

1. Directing – is characterized by one-way communication in which the leader defines the roles of the individual or group and provides the what, how, why, when and where to do the task;
2. Coaching – while the leader is still providing the direction, he or she is now using two-way communication and providing the socio-emotional support that will allow the individual or group being influenced to buy into the process;
3. Supporting – this is how shared decision-making about aspects of how the task is accomplished and the leader is providing fewer task behaviours while maintaining high relationship behavior;
4. Delegating – the leader is still involved in decisions; however, the process and responsibility has been passed to the individual or group. The leader stays involved to monitor progress.

Of these, no one style is considered optimal for all leaders to use all the time. Effective leaders need to be flexible, and must adapt themselves according to the situation.

Elapsed time

Elapsed time is simply the amount of time that passes from the beginning of an event to its end. In simplest terms, elapsed time is how much time goes by from one time (say 3:35pm) to another (6:20pm). An important tool that goes hand and hand with elapsed time is the clock.

Return on Time Invested (ROTI)

ROTI (Return on Time Investment) is a quick and easy method to gauge the time spent on meetings or workshops, and to improve their effectiveness.

Throughput

In general terms, throughput is the maximum rate of production or the maximum rate at which something can be processed

• WIP/Cycle Time
• the amount of material or items passing through a system or process

Kano Analysis

It’s a prioritization technique, it classifies the customer preferences in 4 categories:

1. Exciters/ Delighters: It brings high value to customer
2. Satisfiers: It brings value to customer, more the better
3. Dis-satisfiers: It cause user to dislike product if those features are not there
4. Indifferent: No impact on customer one way or another

ESVP – Explorer, Shopper, Vacationer, Prisoner

• Explorers – Are eager to discover new ideas and insights. They want to learn everything they can about the iteration/release/project.
• Shoppers – Will look over all the available information, and will be happy to go home with one useful new idea.
• Vacationers – Aren’t interested in the work of the retrospective, but are happy to be away from the daily grind.
• Prisoners – Feel that they’ve been forced to attend and would rather be doing something else.

Aspect of Emotional Intelligence:

One should work on the improvement on our emotional intelligence in following order

1. Self-Awareness: Self-Confidence
2. Self-Management: Self-Control
3. Social Awareness: Empathy for others
4. Social Skills: Self-Control

Product Feedback Loop