
CertByte is a bi-weekly blog and segment on the CyberWire Daily podcast hosted by Chris Hare, a content developer and project management specialist at N2K. On CertByte, we share practice questions from our suite of industry-leading content and a study tip to help you achieve the professional certifications you need to fast-track your career growth. View our CertByte series on YouTube.
CertByte: PMI® Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP®)
On this edition of CertByte, we discuss a question from N2K’s PMI® Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP®) practice test.
As your news-to-knowledge partner, N2K will advance your career while bringing you the industry news and trends that help you stay a step ahead. Through our bi-weekly episodes of CertByte on the CyberWire Daily podcast, and these companion articles, we aim to support your certification journey and fast-track your career growth in IT, cybersecurity, and project management. As your host, I or my guest will share a practice question from N2K’s suite of industry-leading content and a study tip (or study “bit” as I like to call it) to increase your confidence and readiness on exam day.
In this segment, my new guest host Steven Burnley and I break down a question from N2K's PMI-ACP Practice Test (revised exam coming soon). The PMI-ACP® exam is meant for candidates who want to enhance their agile mindset and skills. As always, the question we shared is a sample from the future update in progress to N2K's PMI-ACP Practice Test*, and not from the actual PMI-ACP exam.
Quick PMI-ACP study bit.
I shared an important study bit that candidates should know before they sit for the live exam: The resource that is explicitly named as the primary study source for this exam is PMI's Agile Practice Guide; however, I recommend covering all bases and also studying the agile concepts that are part of the PMBOK® Guide (7th Edition) as well.
This week’s question.
You are the project manager and must determine how to best help Andrew complete his project tasks for the current sprint. Andrew chose tasks that are impossible for him to finish on his own. You assign Kelly to assist Andrew in completing the tasks. Which aspect of emotional intelligence did you just portray towards your team members?
Answer choices:
- Social awareness by the use of empathy
- Self-management by the use of self-control
- Self-awareness by the use of self-confidence
- Social skills by the use of rapport building
Working through the logic of each answer choice.
While Steven considered the question, I shared that it falls under the “Leadership” domain and “Task 1: Empower Teams.” Further, the enabler it maps to is “Apply emotional intelligence techniques to support the team, increase empathy, resolve conflict, and support positive influence.” The “Leadership” domain makes up 25% of the topics on the new exam.
I asked Steven to talk me through his thinking, and he felt given the complexity of this scenario-based question, he would take me up on my offer. He felt his first choice, “A. Social awareness by the use of empathy,” may be the likely answer, but held off on a final decision until he assessed the other options. For choice “B. Self-management by the use of self control,” he felt this was more of an “I” statement, which is not reflective of the question, so he ruled this option out. Next, he also felt that the answer choice of “C. Self-awareness by the use of self-confidence” had the same “I” statement involved, and given this was a team-focused question, he felt comfortable scratching that one off the list as well. Finally, Steven felt that although answer choice “D. Social skills by the use of rapport building” sounded tricky, as the question did not represent a scenario where rapport building was involved, he ruled that option out.
Going back to his initial instinct, Steven guessed that the correct answer was: “A. Social awareness by the use of empathy.” I then let Steven know he was absolutely correct and that his method of guessing the correct answer was great. I also mentioned that the use of the funnel method would also be appropriate for this question.
Given the nature of this question, I felt it was important to share that the PMI incorporates the Agile Manifesto and mindset into the foundation of this exam, which I will link to in the show notes, Part of developing an agile mindset is to leverage servant leadership to benefit a team and their goals. A servant leader is typically the role of project manager, or even a scrum master, or anyone in a similar type of role.
So that the context of this question can be better understood, I emphasized that the role of the servant leader is to empower the team. And, one way that servant leaders do this is by removing impediments, blockers, whatever you want to call them, for their team. So the project manager's role in this scenario was to do just that. Andrew's blocker was that he gave himself tasks that he couldn't possibly complete. By the project manager removing the blocker of Andrew’s overwhelm in getting his tasks done, the project manager would be displaying empathy towards his situation by getting him help with his tasks while keeping the sprint on track with no disruption.
Steven then inquired about the other answer choices"self-management" and "self-awareness." He inquired if they would be part of the agile manifesto or mindset that students should know about. The answer, however, was a bit more complex. Yes, candidates should know these terms, and no, not all answers are part of the agile manifesto and mindset; however, some have overlapping emotional intelligence and servant leadership definitions. Now “self-management” and “self-awareness” are terms that are well-defined in the PMBOK® Guide (7th Edition) rather than the PMI Agile Practice Guide, that's one of the reasons my study bit recommended studying the agile aspects of the PMBOK® Guide for this test as well. Addressing these in order of our answer choices: Self-management has to do with a combination of a servant leadership aspect, an Agile working approach, and an aspect of emotional intelligence -- it involves being able to control and redirect feelings and impulses that are disruptive.
Self-awareness is an aspect of emotional awareness and servant leadership where a person has a level of understanding of their motivations, goals, strengths, weaknesses, and emotions. This includes recognizing your stress triggers.
Finally, social skills are an aspect of emotional awareness that also has to do with improving bonds among team members. They are considered a culmination of all the other aspects of emotional intelligence, as an umbrella term for how to best manage and motivate teams and how to relationship-build.
So, while there are factual elements present in each of these answers, empathy is the key word here that maps and tracks best to the scenario where you are showing empathy, which, in a project management context, has to do with understanding the needs and perspectives of the people who make up your project ecosystem.
In response to Steven’s question about whether the PMI changed anything in terms of qualifications for this version of the PMI-ACP exam vs. the previous version, I shared that indeed there were changes, but in the interest of time, I mentioned only one, which is that whereas in the previous version of the PMI-ACP, they required 21 contact hours of agile practice training, now they require 28 hours of formal training in agile practices, frameworks, and methodologies (however, 21 hours will be accepted through March 31, 2025). More information about qualifications, eligibility, and exam coverage can be found in the new PMI-ACP Exam Content Outline.
As a note to our listeners, N2K’s practice test for the new version of the PMI-ACP is in progress and we will announce when it is ready for purchase. Also, for all of our PMI-based practice tests, N2K has added a new Quick Quiz feature for candidates to do some byte-sized study sessions whenever they're pressed for time.
We also have several more Microsoft, CompTIA, and Amazon practice test updates coming soon, so keep a lookout on our website or subscribe to our monthly newsletter.
Want more help with this exam?
Whether you are actively studying for the PMI-ACP exam or would like to suggest a future certification question, email us at certbyte at n2k.com.
Premium certification prep tools.
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Explore key terms from the PMI-ACP certification.
Visit N2K CyberWire’s glossary to dive deeper into these key terms, listed in the order discussed in our segment: PMI-ACP, agnostic (technology), ISO, agile software development, sprint, Agile Manifesto, servant leader, scrum, and scrum master.
Happy certifying!