The PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)® credential remains one of the most valuable certifications for demonstrating your agile expertise across industries. In 2024, PMI® refreshed the PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline to better reflect today’s fast-paced, adaptable project environments.

If you’re wondering how to prepare for the new PMI-ACP® exam and truly master agile concepts, this practical guide will help you succeed with confidence.

What’s New in the PMI-ACP Exam?

The new exam outline organizes the knowledge areas into four updated domains, moving away from the older seven-domain structure. These new domains emphasize agile mindset, value-driven outcomes, stakeholder collaboration, and continuous improvement, reflecting a more holistic agile perspective.

The 2024 PMI-ACP® domains are:

✅ Domain I: Agile Principles and Mindset (30%)
Understand, apply, and advocate for the values and principles of agile across the team, product, and organization.

✅ Domain II: Value Delivery (25%)
Use incremental delivery, feedback loops, prioritization, and customer collaboration to maximize product and business value.

✅ Domain III: Stakeholder Engagement and Team Performance (25%)
Foster high-performing, collaborative, empowered teams while engaging stakeholders effectively.

✅ Domain IV: Continuous Improvement (20%)
Build a culture of continuous learning and process adaptation to improve people, products, and outcomes.

This streamlined approach focuses less on specific frameworks and more on how you think and behave as an agile practitioner.

How to Master Agile Concepts for the PMI-ACP Exam

1. Embrace the Agile Mindset

At the core of agile is its mindset — a commitment to transparency, continuous learning, customer collaboration, and delivering incremental value. Study the Agile Manifesto’s 4 values and 12 principles, and reflect on how they apply in real work scenarios.

👉 Tip: Think of responding to change over following a plan as a habit, not just a phrase.

2. Deepen Your Value Delivery Skills

The updated exam strongly emphasizes delivering business value early and often. Make sure you understand:
✅ Prioritization techniques (MoSCoW, Kano, WSJF)
✅ Incremental delivery methods
✅ MVP (Minimum Viable Product) concepts
✅ Using customer feedback to adapt

Expect situational questions about balancing stakeholder demands while protecting team throughput.

3. Understand Modern Agile Frameworks

While the PMI-ACP® still expects you to be familiar with Scrum, Kanban, XP, Lean, and hybrid approaches, the focus is on how you apply these frameworks to maximize outcomes. Learn to:

• Map frameworks to business contexts
• Tailor practices for different product types
• Integrate continuous feedback and inspect/adapt cycles

4. Strengthen Stakeholder and Team Collaboration

Agile is a people-first approach. PMI’s new domain on stakeholder engagement and team performance tests how you:
✅ Build trust
✅ Foster self-organizing, cross-functional teams
✅ Handle conflict
✅ Maintain stakeholder alignment through transparency

👉 Tip: Study servant leadership, coaching techniques, and conflict resolution patterns.

5. Drive Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement is a key differentiator in agile. Be ready to answer questions about:

• Process retrospectives
• Incremental product improvements
• Techniques for continuous learning
• Measuring team and process performance

A growth mindset is essential — look for opportunities to evolve processes, not just follow them.

Practice with Situational Questions

The updated PMI-ACP exam is scenario-heavy. You’ll face questions about:
✅ A team resisting change
✅ Stakeholder scope creep
✅ Prioritization trade-offs
✅ Metrics to measure value delivery

Don’t just memorize definitions — practice reasoning through a situation, weighing agile values and making sound judgments.

Tips for Exam Day

✅ Manage your time: 120 questions in 3 hours
✅ Look for agile keywords that identify the domain (incremental, feedback, self-organizing, retrospective)
✅ Eliminate choices that conflict with agile values (e.g., top-down command-and-control answers)
✅ Trust your understanding of why agile works, not just how

Final Thoughts

The PMI-ACP® is designed to validate your mindset and behavior as an agile practitioner — not just framework knowledge. By aligning your preparation with the updated exam domains — Principles & Mindset, Value Delivery, Stakeholder & Team Performance, and Continuous Improvement — you’ll be well-prepared to pass the exam and make a true impact in your agile projects.

Need help mastering the new PMI-ACP®? Check out our PMI-ACP exam prep program with up-to-date coaching, scenario practice, and expert support to help you earn your certification confidently!