The Project Management Professional (PMP)® credential is the most crucial for project managers and is widely regarded as the gold standard in project management.
The PMI-ACP® certification is the PMI's fastest growing qualification. The PMI-ACP covers a variety of agile methodologies, including Scrum, Kanban, Lean, extreme programming (XP), and test-driven development (TDD).
The same company manages both of these certifications (PMI). The standards for passing these two certifications are fairly high, as you could expect from PMI.
Prerequisites
For PMP, if you have a secondary degree you need to have 7,500 hours leading and directing projects and 35 hours of project management education. However, if you have a degree you only need 4,500 hours leading and directing projects and also 35 hours of project management education.
For PMI-ACP you need to have 2,000 hours of general project experience. However, if you have a current PMP® or PgMP® certification, this requirement no longer applies. Apart from this, you need to have 1,500 hours working on agile projects. This requirement is in addition to the 2,000 hours of general project experience. You also need 21 contact hours of training in agile practices.
PMP requires 4500 hours of previous project management experience.
PMI-ACP requires 1500 hours of previous project management experience with agile methodologies and 2000 hours of general project experience.
Study time
To successfully complete the PMP certification you will need 1 to 3 months (or even more depending on your daily commitment) to be able to assimilate all information that is on PMBOK and related materials. Passing the PMP exam is really challenging and you need to be very well prepared.
For the PMI-ACP certification, you don't have a PMI-ACP bible like the PMBOK where all the concepts that you need to know are distilled. The PMI points their exam candidates to 12 different books that in total have more than 4000 pages. Don't be alarmed, you will find that the journey in this certification is quite enjoyable and there are excellent preparation courses that will help you.
PMP +- 3 Months
PMI-ACP +- 3 Months
Exam
Both certifications have an electronic test with multiple choice questions (one question, four possible answers).
In PMP and PMI-ACP you need to execute the test in a PMI authorized facility which is monitored by security cameras and you have no access to the internet. Please note that there is no defined pass rate since the passing score for all PMI credential examinations is determined by sound psychometric analysis, this means that the passing score for each candidate is different and based on the overall difficulty of that exam.
PMP 200 question in 4 hours
PMI-ACP 120 questions in 3 hours
Both exams are demanding and you need to be very well prepared. However, I found the PMI-ACP the most accessible of the two. PMP has a lot of content and you feel as if you are graduating in project management (agile inclusive). PMI-ACP focus on agile and you have less content to be aware of.
Which one should I take first?
It's a hard question to answer. Since these two certifications are very time demanding and the cost is almost the same, choose the certification that currently applies for what you are doing on your projects.
If your projects are using mainly predictive approaches (e.g. waterfall) then the PMP certification is an excellent fit. Otherwise, if you are already practicing agile, the PMP-ACP is the way to go.
Please refer to the link provided for accessing the PMP exam preparation course.
https://prepzo.com/categories/business/project-management
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