The Growth of the PMI-ACP Certification

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile   Career Development   New Practitioners   Using PMI Standards  

It is not often we get a chance to watch the growth of a new certification as it occurs. The PMP credential started in 1984 and will be marking its 30^th birthday next year. It now has over half a million active credential holders, but it did not start like that--in the early years, the growth was very slow. The PRINCE2 credential was launched in 1996 and celebrated its one millionth exam taken in September of 2012. However, not everyone passes the PRINCE2 exam and not everyone who does pass maintains their credential--so that statistic is a little misleading and makes direct comparison between the PMP and PRINCE2 certifications problematic.

I have some better insights into the PMI-ACP because I worked on the steering committee, authored a book to help those studying for it and recently received data about the counts for the last 12 months. The PMI-ACP is the new Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP) credential. The credential was launched with a pilot program at the end of 2011 and then a formal launch in 2012.

For many people, PMI is not noted for its development or promotion of agile methods. As an agile practitioner myself, the PMI’s traditional style of project management was pretty much what I had been rebelling against for the last 20 years. However, PMI recruited a team of subject matter experts including the likes…

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