PRINCE2®Agile vs PMI-ACP®: What’s Best for You?
6K- by Manikandan Mohanakrishnan
- 12th Sep, 2020
- Last updated on 29th Sep, 2020
- 9 mins read
Changing industrial trends and the mass adaptability of agile practices have transformed the way organizations work. Over time, a number of project management methodologies have cropped up to suit different industry needs, and today’s business leaders have a wide array of frameworks to rely upon. This has led to the inevitable need for skilled project management professionals who are well-versed in different frameworks. When it comes to the widely popular Agile methodologies, the presence of multiple certifications in agile / agile project management methods can seem overwhelming to aspiring professionals.
This article will give you a comprehensive overview of PRINCE2®Agile and PMI-ACP® (Agile Certified Practitioner) certifications to help you make an informed choice.
Project leading
What is a Project?
Due to the accelerated pace of change, today’s enterprises have to cope with the complexities of emergent requirements over the course of a project. Strategic business decisions are often made after taking stock of competitors’ actions, technological advancements, regulatory changes, ongoing business developments and so on. In order to compete and thrive in the future, existing ways of working must be aligned to adapt to these evolving needs.
Example: Today every bank across the globe offers innovative banking products and services like mobile banking applications, ATMs etc. These changes have been adopted to cater to the evolving expectations of customers while adapting to the latest technological advancements.
Projects are the means of introducing change. A collective effort from different stakeholders needs to be pumped into the project initiatives to deliver the products and to accomplish the objectives within definitive timescales.
Example: The Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of a country is planning to design, build, roll-out and implement a Health ID card system for its citizens within a year. This project will benefit the government and its citizens in various ways. Different organizations such as government, health ministry, hospitals, technology providers have to work collaboratively to implement the product within the identified timescale, cost and quality.
Project Manager planning
What is Project management?
When different stakeholders come together to deliver a unique product within an estimated timescale and cost, there should be someone who needs to be accountable and responsible to manage the different aspects of the project. Project management broadly revolves around key activities such as plan, execute, monitor and control. Management of projects is an art which includes skills like leadership, domain knowledge, interpersonal skills, people management, powerful communication, stakeholder engagement, conflict management, business acumen etc.,
Example: A central library run by a private firm is looking to launch a digitized version of its books. A Project Manager is identified to manage the scope, cost, time, quality, risks, resources, stakeholders, communications etc., from the beginning to the end of the project.
Project managers and their organizations can choose to apply the right methods, tools, techniques, standards, guidance, good or best practices to run their projects.
Why agile in project management?
As digital transformation is catching up with many organizations, business demands are also increasing, and the requirements for products and services is continually evolving as well. To meet the demands of businesses today, project-driven organizations should look for ways to increase the speed of product delivery while upholding quality. Agile project management is an iterative approach to delivering a project throughout its life cycle. The Agile framework helps project managers to stay on top of emergent requirements and adapt to change more readily, delivering products that are better aligned with customer expectations.
With agile methods such as Scrum being widely accepted and used in today’s organizations for software development projects, more agility is seen in the delivery teams. Product development in Scrum teams occurs in shorter iterations/timeboxes (2 weeks to 4 weeks). This is because the goal is to deliver minimum viable products (MVP) or a feature/functionality within shorter sprints.
Example: As a part of digital transformation, a school wants to launch a mobile app. In the beginning of the academic year, the first section of the app was ready and launched for use. During the launch, it only had a login and a digital diary feature. In the second month, they added a few more features such as timetable, attendance tracker. In the third month, new enhanced features such as progress card, online payment options were added. By the end of six months, the app had varied features to suit the needs of the school, teachers, students and parents and it added value to all categories of stakeholders iteratively.
The Contrast of Waterfall Vs. Agile ways of working:
The Contrast of Waterfall Vs. Agile ways of working:
The reason for agile’s popularity is because of its ability to address the new demands being placed on the project team.
Prince2 Processes
What is PRINCE2®?
PRINCE2® (PRojects IN a Controlled Environment) is widely considered the leading project management method. It is a unique, light weight, scalable, flexible, highly tailorable, principle-driven, agile enabled framework to run your projects.
PRINCE2 revolves around the concepts of principles (value statements), themes (focus areas to run the project) and processes (steps involved to accomplish project objectives).
Let’s get introduced to the PRINCE2 elements:
Principles:
| Continued business justification | Business value |
| Learn from experience | Lessons are sought, recorded and acted upon; continuous improvement |
| Defined roles and responsibilities | All stakeholders represented |
| Manage by stages | Provides management control and realistic planning horizons |
| Manage by exception | Authority delegation for directing, managing and delivering within tolerances |
| Focus on products | Quality-centric approach to planning |
| Tailor to suit the project | Tailor to suit project environment, size, complexity, importance, risk, etc. |
Themes:
| Business Case | Why? |
| Organization | Who? |
| Quality | What? |
| Plans | How?, How much?, When? |
| Risk | What’s the impact? |
Progress | Where are we now? |
| Where are we going? | |
| Should we carry on? |
Processes:
| Starting Up A Project | Verify whether the project is worthwhile and viable. |
| Directing A Project | Decision making, allocation of resources and estimating expenditure. |
| Initiating A Project | Setting up a firm foundation (controlled environment) for the project. |
| Managing Stage Boundaries | Preparation for management review including stage planning. |
| Controlling A Stage | Day to day management of the work, issues and risk. |
| Managing Product Delivery | Product creation, delivery and acceptance. |
| Closing A Project | Final delivery, acceptance and project evaluation. |
PRINCE2® Process Flow Diagram:
PRINCE2® Process Flow Diagram:
Processes are at the core of the PRINCE2 framework. Application of themes, principles and tailoring of the processes makes it easy to adopt and adapt which reduces the bureaucracy of project management. At the same time, it provides the proper governance to keep the projects justified.
What is covered in PRINCE2 Agile™?
Project Environment
If PRINCE2® is already agile, what is PRINCE2 ® Agile?
PRINCE2® Agile guidance is all about tailoring PRINCE2 to incorporate Agile methods. PRINCE2 is a neutral project management framework which can support both traditional waterfall projects as well as agile or adaptive or iterative projects.
To provide guidance on how to integrate high velocity models or practices into the existing projects for both IT and non-IT industries, PRINCE2 Agile considers Scrum, Kanban, Lean approaches. The intention is not to explain all the agile frameworks in detail; but rather is to show practitioners how to amalgamate PRINCE2 with other agile practices. PRINCE2 considers agile as a collection of behaviours, concepts, frameworks and techniques.
In a nutshell, PRINCE2® Agile is basically a marriage between PRINCE2 and Scrum practices.
PRINCE2’s core concepts of principles, themes and processes are tossed up with agile concepts, techniques, behaviours, practices which fuels more velocity into the existing framework.
Certification:
PRINCE2® Agile has two levels of certification (Foundation and Practitioner)
Foundation Exam:
- Multiple choice
- 50 questions
- 1 hour to complete the paper
- Achieve 28 or more out of possible 50 marks (55%) to pass the exam
- Closed book exam
Practitioner Exam:
- Multiple choice
- 50 questions based on project scenario
- 2 hours 30 minutes to complete the paper
- Achieve 30 or more out of possible 50 marks (60%) to pass the exam
- Open book exam. You can use the “AXELOS® PRINCE2 Agile™ guidance book”.
Certification Scheme:
Prior project management experience is not required to take up the certification.
What is covered in PMI-ACP®?
The Project Management Institute’s Agile Certified Practitioner is a credible certification which provides thorough knowledge to project managers using agile methodologies. 
There are many agile practices other than Scrum that are widely used in the industry such as eXtreme Programming, DevOps, Test Driven Development (TDD), Behaviour Driven Development (BDD), Feature Driven Development (FDD), Crystal, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD), Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM), Kanban, Lean Product Development etc., Most of these practices revolve around the core concept of iterations with other variations. Most of these practices are ‘IT-only’ frameworks.
Agile mindset and principles play a vital role in executing the projects in a different way as compared to the traditional ways. Right from covering the concepts of agile values, mindset, practices, terminologies, most of the above-mentioned agile models are covered in a greater detail in this program.
Concepts and techniques like agile contracting, agile risk management, earned value management (EVM), cumulative flow diagrams (CFD), estimation techniques, relative prioritization, work in progress (WIP) limits, Kano analysis, product backlog grooming, personas, user stories, story maps, wireframes, product road map, minimum marketable feature (MMF), definition of done, continuous integration, burn charts, stakeholder engagement, leadership, building agile teams, coaching, osmotic communication, timeboxing, planning poker, release planning, problem solving, lead time, cycle time, defect rate, control limits, throughput, velocity, variance and trend analysis, value stream mapping, continuous improvement, retrospectives, learning cycles etc., are imparted as a part of this certification course.
Certification:
- 120 Multiple choice questions
- 3 hours to complete the exam
- Closed book exam
Prerequisite:
- Secondary degree
- 21 contact hours of training in agile practices
- 12 months of general project management experience within 5 years.
- 8 months of agile project management experience within the last 3 years.
Differences in these certifications:
| Parameters | PRINCE2 Agile | PMI-ACP |
|---|---|---|
| Topics covered | It is a blend of PRINCE2® and Scrum. | Spans across many approaches of agile. |
| Governing body | Axelos | Project Management Institute |
| Exam body | Peoplecert | Pearson VUE |
| Exam mode | Paper-based test, computer-based test and Online proctored exam | Online proctored exam |
| Prerequisite | No prior project management experience is required. PRINCE2 Foundation or PRINCE2 Agile foundation certification is a prerequisite for taking up the practitioner exam. | Secondary degree 21 contact hours of training in agile practices 12 months of general project management experience within 5 years. 8 months of agile project management experience within the last 3 years. |
| Training | 4 days of training from an Accredited Training Organization (ATO) by Axelos | 3 days of training from a Registered Training Partner (REP) by PMI |
| Cost of training & certification | Approximately Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 | Approximately Rs. 40,000 to 50,000 |
| Maintaining the certification | Foundation certification has a life time validity. Practitioners need to earn 20 continuing professional development (CPD) points every year. | Earn 30 professional development units (PDU) every three years. |
Merits and demerits of both these certifications:
Merits of PRINCE2® Agile:
- PRINCE2 Agile provides a good governance model to run the project with guidance on how to incorporate any agile model.
- It does not favour one agile approach over any other although Scrum is taken as a reference to explain the concept of tailoring.
- It can be applied to any type of project and can easily be implemented alongside specialist, industry-specific models.
Demerits of PRINCE2® Agile:
- It does not touch upon the various project management tools or techniques which are essential for project management.
Merits of PMI-ACP®:
- It prepares the project managers to become versatile with different types of agile project management practices.
- Coverage of different types of tools and techniques polishes one’s ability to manage scope, cost, time, quality, risks, resources, stakeholders, communication etc.
Demerits of PMI-ACP®:
- It does not have an exclusive body of knowledge (BOK) like PMBOK® guide. Reference to different literature and books may be essential. This means a structured way to agile project management is missing in its approach.
The best-suited certification: How to pick the right one?
- PRINCE2® Agile can benefit the existing PRINCE2® community, PRINCE2® Practitioners, anyone who is using agile in Project Management. Even organizations and individuals outside the PRINCE2® community, having experience with agile can benefit from this certification. It is also ideal for total novices. If you fall under any of the categories mentioned above, you can pick this certification as your first step in the project management world. This is also the right choice for professionals and enterprises that serve clients based in UK, Europe and Australia.
- PMI-ACP is a one-stop solution for project managers and agile teams keen on expanding their skill-set to manage various agile projects. If you are ready to dedicate at least 2 hours every day for 1 to 2 months for exam preparation and earn a globally recognized certification, go for it.
Conclusion:
Every practice has its own strength and weakness. Ultimately, it is up to the organizations and practitioners to choose the right project management methodologies to suit their needs and business/career goals.
Manikandan Mohanakrishnan
Manikandan M is a Senior Consultant with over 18+ years of industry experience. He is specialized in Service Management, Project Management, Process Consultancy, Learning & Development, IT Infrastructure Management, Business Relationship Management, Partner Management.
Manikandan worked as a Project Manager with IBM India Private Limited where he was responsible for the delivery of complex infrastructure projects for an Australian Bank.
Additionally, he worked as a Service Delivery Manager with TPV Technology India Private Limited to manage Service Operations and Projects across SAARC nations.
Over the past 5 years he focused on training and consulting with various service providers.
He delivered more than 500+ sessions on Service Management and Project Management modules.
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Why Do We Use Fibonacci Series for Estimation
By Krishnakumar Kuppusamy
In this article, my focus is on sharing my experience as a Trainer/Mentor/Coach to Agile teams with respect to Agile estimations; and on using the Fibonacci sequence as scale to size the Story. What will you learn in this article? Agile practitioners mostly use Story points as a measure for estimation, typically using the Fibonacci scale. In this article we are going to understand the top reasons why we use the Fibonacci series for estimation, and how it works in practice. Before we get to the details, let us try to understand some of the fundamentals. Why do we need to estimate?Estimates help the project team to: Identify the time & effort required to arrive at the project schedule Identify the right number of people required to do the work Arrive at the budget by rolling up the cost of all activities required to complete the work; and Prioritize the work in conjunction with the value that will be delivered. Some software developers fear to provide effort estimates as they are accountable to complete their work within the time. Hence, they take so much time to get into the details to make sure they have enough information to provide the estimates. This sometimes may not be possible during the beginning of the project as the team may not have enough information on hand to provide the effort estimates for all the tasks to be performed. Hence the order of magnitude (ROM, Budget or Definitive) will be applied at various stages during the project based on the available information to predict the effort needed to complete the activities. Agile Estimation Typically, in traditional project management, effort estimations may or may not be agreed upon by the entire team. Estimates may either be given by the Project Manager/Tech Lead to the team or the developers/testers may estimate for the piece of work that they have been assigned. This way of estimating a project does not provide an opportunity for the team to collaborate. There may be a difference of opinion with the team members in the effort that need to be spent on an activity. The way the estimations are done within an Agile team is little different. It is just not about the measure used to estimate the effort (for example Story Points), but ensures that the team collaborate among themselves, thus providing an opportunity for knowledge sharing. This helps the accuracy of the estimates when compared to doing individual vs group estimates as the team members come from different backgrounds and roles (developers, testers, quality analysts, business analysts). An Agile team effort estimate focuses on relative sizing of user stories and does not focus on the duration; hence it is faster. The team learns to size the story relatively and accurately over a period of a few iterations (sprints), thus improving the predictability (arrived through establishing consistent velocity over a period of few iterations) as well. Planning Poker is commonly used as the planning exercise for the team to collaborate and size the stories. Planning Poker uses Fibonacci sequence to assign a value to the epic/feature/story. What is Fibonacci Series? According to Oxford dictionary, Fibonacci Series is : “ a series of numbers in which each number ( Fibonacci number ) is the sum of the two preceding numbers. The simplest is the series 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144 etc” The formula to arrive at a Fibonacci sequence is: Xn = Xn-1 + Xn-2 This sequence will be slightly modified when used in Agile estimations: typically, it will not have values beyond 100 and may have 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5,8, 13, 20, 40, 100. Some teams limit the highest value as 21 and use 0, 1/2, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. Top 3 Reasons Why Using the Fibonacci Sequence Will Make You Better at Estimating Tasks 1. Weber–Fechner law: “The Weber–Fechner law refers to two related hypotheses in the field of psychophysics, known as Weber's law and Fechner's law. Both laws relate to human perception, more specifically the relation between the actual change in a physical stimulus and the perceived change. This includes stimuli to all senses: vision, hearing, taste, touch, and smell” Applying the law to Numerical Cognition, “Psychological studies show that it becomes increasingly difficult to discriminate between two numbers as the difference between them decreases. This is called the distance effect. This is important in areas of magnitude estimation, such as dealing with large scales and estimating distances. It may also play a role in explaining why consumers neglect to shop around to save a small percentage on a large purchase, but will shop around to save a large percentage on a small purchase which represents a much smaller absolute dollar amount” (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weber%E2%80%93Fechner_law) The Fibonacci sequence very well corresponds to Weber’s law. The values in the Fibonacci sequence are about 60% higher than the previous value, and hence applying relative sizing is much easier. It is very challenging to distinguish the size of two numbers which are adjacent to each other, by just looking at the objects. Let us take an example of a football and cricket ball. The approximate diameter of a cricket ball would be 2.8 to 2.86 inches whereas the diameter of a football would be 8.66 inches. It is easy to distinguish the relative size of these two (i.e., approximately the diameter of a football is 3 times that of a cricket ball). However, it is very challenging to distinguish between two cricket balls that vary 1 inch in diameter, unless you measure both. If you look at the Fibonacci sequence, the relative size between two adjacent numbers is more than 60% and this helps us to be able to size them accordingly. 2. Reflect Uncertainty The smaller value assigned from the Fibonacci sequence to a user story usually means that the story is well understood, and the user story follows INVEST (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small and Testable) guidelines. Whereas the largest value denotes the story is not well understood or it needs to be broken down further. Smaller stories can be confidently estimated by the team in detail. A general practice from matured Agile teams is that the Fibonacci sequence is restricted up to 21 (0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21) and any story which is of size beyond 21 will have to be broken down further. This ensures that the team is not giving any room for greater uncertainty and good practice for the team to write better stories under the INVEST guidelines. 3. Comparison Though it is not mandatory to use Fibonacci sequence for story point estimations, the sequence is easier to understand and adoptable by the team. Individuals are better at comparison than estimation. The easy sequence and distinguishable values of Fibonacci sequence helps to estimate by not measuring the objects but by comparison. How Does Fibonacci Agile Estimation Work in Practice? When do you think is the right time for the Agile team to estimate user stories that are prioritized by the Product Owner in the product backlog? In my experience, I would say that the estimates (story point sizing) should happen during the Iteration/Sprint backlog grooming sessions. This gives the team the time to go through the user stories in detail, collaborate and mutually agree using the Planning Poker exercise. Then what do we do in Sprint Planning? – This ceremony should be used to pick the stories from the product backlog (fulfils Definition of Ready), that can be completed within the iteration/sprint and then breakdown the stories into tasks and do one more level of estimation which is effort estimation denoted in hours. Let us say a team is assigned a task to estimate a reporting module to be developed: The team would agree that it is a difficult task to provide an effort estimation and it would take a longer time to complete; but how long will it take? Using Simple, Medium and Complex categorization would simply mean that the estimate falls into the Complex category; but how complex is it? Breaking down the requirement into granularized tasks, getting to the minute details and then arriving at an effort estimation would be a complex process and time consuming as well. Can the team take linear sequence (1,2,4,8,10,12,14,16….) and size them for a high-level estimation? Is it possible to size between 50 and 52? What can be defined as the highest scale? Using Fibonacci series helps the team to size the stories which have a distinguishable value and as discussed earlier, matured Agile teams use modified Fibonacci series and have highest scale of 21 to size a story. As discussed above, the Fibonacci numbers are 60% above than the previous number, and that helps in relative sizing. Summary There are various methods to estimate user stories, like T-Shirt sizing, Dot voting, Affinity Mapping etc. Story points is the widely used measurement for sizing the user stories. Fibonacci series helps the team to compare between two stories; and its very nature of distinguishable values helps them to fit the story into the right size that reflects uncertainties, which further helps the team to refine the story to remove those uncertainties. Hope this article was useful to you.
- by Krishnakumar Kuppusamy
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- 9 mins read
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CSM or CSPO: Which Certification Fits Your Requirement?
By KnowledgeHut
Agile methodology has been gaining a lot of clout in the IT Industry recently. With so much attention and talks around it all companies big and small are making themselves agile ready to deliver better sooner. Some common Certificate courses on Scrum methodology have also gained popularity because Scrum is the least restrictive of all agile approaches. CSM and CSPO are two such known Certifications that are often thought of as next steps in career progression introspection analysis. While both grant the benefit of knowledge, it is important to analyse what Certification makes more sense and can help better in future growth. CSM Certification: It is for professionals seeking the Certified Scrum Master Certification. Its course work is educative to learn about how Scrum methodology works. Moreover, all the principles and practices around scrum are discussed in detail to lay a sound foundation of its conceptual framework. This certification is beneficial to gain an understanding of Scrum for all present and future scrum projects. Gaining a CSM Certification would benefit individuals who would rather want a Certification that validates their scrum knowledge. Hiring decisions based on Certifications are usually a motivator for professionals pursuing the Certification. This could also lead to challenging opportunities in a space that may interest professionals. Also, professionals seeking to change their present roles can also benefit from this certification to project their interest in this field. Other benefits of CSM could be acceptance in scrum based teams based on scrum knowledge. Also since a lot of organisations tend to portray to their respective client base they own the skills and knowledge to deliver, they also rely on certified professionals to join them so that they may use this as their asset over competitors. Another reason to pursue CSM could also be to expand ones’ knowledge of scrum methodology to be at par with peers. Since existing technical courses do not teach these new methodologies in courseware, pursuing a course about Scrum can help deliver work better if you have recently joined a scrum team or if you plan to join one. So, it is beneficial not only for professionals seeking knowledge as fresher but also for experienced professionals who seek work in scrum space. CSPO Training: CSPO is a common IT Certification acronym for Certified Scrum Product Owner. CSPO Certification is beneficial for professionals who are closer to business. This course is also useful to give an end to end view of the feature that traverses from conceptualisation to deployment or ideation to a minimum viable product. Also, aspects related to understanding stakeholder interests in each functionality are reiterated in this course. Also, because a Product Owner’s role is critical for any organisation they tend to seek candidates who can genuinely guide the team well. While Certification is a way to project, that relevant knowledge is present and make way for a baseline to set that a candidate has genuine interest in the area and that they are focused on continuous growth. A Certified Scrum Product Owner training is also a good to have training to be able to handle the work as a Product Owner better. While a lot of professionals learn on the job, this certification is from the very Scrum Alliance dedicated to set guidelines that can help smoothen the learning curve. A Certification decision is hence usually based on career goals, present career role, and future possible roadmap. Having knowledge is always good and to keep refreshing basics helps revisiting decisions and making teams and individuals in scrum space more effective.
- by KnowledgeHut
- 16 Feb 2017
Agile methodology has been gaining a lot of clout ... Read More
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