What is ACP certification?

PMI-ACP (Agile certified practitioner) is an agile management professional qualification certification. It is a qualification certification for agile practitioners initiated by the American Project Management Institute (PMI) in 191 countries and regions around the world. This certification is a certificate with comprehensive knowledge and methods, the highest gold content, and the widest recognition in the field of agile in the world.

Scrum, one of many important agile methodologies, has been widely used in the software industry. Scrum’s certification process is to confirm the learning progress through online examination, indicating the applicant’s understanding of the Scrum framework. However, the content of ACP includes the learning and application of a variety of agile methods, such as Scrum, Extreme Programming, Kanban, Feature Driven Development, Lean, Dynamic System Development Method, Crystal, and so forth. Applicants need to participate in a variety of training and examinations and have agile teamwork experience.

Although each agile method is unique in its specific method, they all share a common vision and core values (see the agile manifesto). They all basically include repetition and constant feedback that it provides to constantly refine and deliver a software system. They all involve continuous planning, continuous testing, continuous integration, and other forms of the continuous evolution of both the project and the software. These are all lightweight, especially compared to traditional waterfall-style processes, and are instinctively adapted. More important about quick approaches is that they all focus on collaborating with people and making decisions together quickly and efficiently.

Why do we need agile management?

We need agile management because it has four significant advantages which can make this management methodology suitable for the era of rapid change.

The four advantages of agile are given below…

1. Embrace Change. 

   Because it is difficult to make a long-term plan feasible, the “man-month myth” is just a myth. During the implementation of the plan, the change of the world will lead to the change of demand. The change of demand will inevitably lead to the failure of the development work according to the plan. Moreover, “man”, as the most important factor in the development process, is changing all the time. People will change, people will have emotions and people will have private affairs. Various factors will affect the implementation of the plan, so the plan should be short and adjusted in time to respond to the infeasibility of the plan caused by all changes and avoid detours.

2. Quick Response. 

   With the change of market environment, more and more products and services are required to respond in time. For example, according to the traditional way, it is planned to have a version every six months. Once the demand needs to be adjusted, all the subsequent plans have to be changed, which will bring great challenges to traditional project management and the cost of change is extremely high. In most cases, it will not be settled because of the objection of most people.

3. Quickly Bring Functions to The Market.   

   “Being the first one is better than being the best one.”, which is effective in many rapidly changing business environments, especially in the Internet industry. It is particularly important to quickly occupy the market, which is to seek benefits from time.

   Take a simple example. For instance, an application is a user system. It usually is very simple and mature software technology. According to the idea of programmers, it is best to design functions such as user registration and login, password modification, password forgetting, password remembering, login verification code, and log out at one time. Suppose it takes 12 working days according to the layered design and development method, and each function takes 2 days on average. However, if it is developed by function version by version instead of one-time development, but placed in different versions, it may take 18 working days, and each function takes 3 days on average. Why? Because there will be reconstruction, modification interface, etc.

   But the advantage of the latter method is that the first version of the software would come out in just three days. That means the application can be launched on the third day, and then gradually complete other functions.

   The web application directly closes the browser and the app directly exits the application. If it is completed at one time, it takes 12 working days to go online. If there is registration and login, it can go online on the third day, striving for 15 working days of listing time. It is more worthwhile to calculate the impact on a company in the next 15 days than the increased workload.

   At the back of their minds, one of them had an idea that could be introduced to the market three months earlier.

4. More Return Faster

   Another benefit of shorter, iterative processes is that you can see the fruits of your labors more immediately. On longer-term Waterfall projects, you may be working for months or even years on implementing a feature, product, or new design without seeing any return on investment. This can be a hard sell to investors or shareholders when it comes to expensive projects. With Agile, you could see a return much sooner after the investment stage. This means customers receive regular value from your service and shareholders get frequent updates on project performance.

What are the agile job opportunities in 2022?

The world is changing. Due to the serious COVID-19 epidemic situation, many small companies have gone broke, and many big companies have to bring their working process online. Therefore, in 2022, agile job opportunities mainly exist in big global companies.

Here are some international companies which favor the ACP certification holders.

As of Feb 7, 2022, the average annual pay for a PMI ACP in the United States is $126,824 a year.

Just in case you need a simple salary calculator, that works out to be approximately $60.97 an hour. This is the equivalent of $2,439/week or $10,569/month.

What are the top 10 highest paying cities for PMI ACP jobs:

We have identified 10 cities where the average salary for a PMI ACP job is higher than the national average. At the top of the list is San Francisco, CA, Fremont, CA, and San Jose, CA in second and third place. San Jose, CA surpassed the national average by 24,476 (19.3%), and San Francisco, CA further advanced that trend with an average of $ 35,514 (28.0%) above the 126,824 average.

Importantly, San Francisco, CA has a moderately active PMI ACP job market where only a handful of companies are currently hiring for such roles. Since the average wages in these 10 cities are higher than the national average, the opportunities for economic advancement seem to be very fruitful as the PMI changes position as ACP.

Finally, another thing to consider is that the average wages in these top ten cities fluctuate very little to 10% between San Francisco, CA, and Sunnyvale, CA, which reinforces the limited possibility of many wage advances. The possibility of the low cost of living may be the best factor when considering position and salary for a PMI ACP role.

What are the top 5 best paid PMI ACP jobs in the United States?

By analyzing similar jobs related to the PMI ACP job category, we have found five relevant ones. However, no one pays more than the average $126,824 for a PMI ACP job. Yet PMI RMP, Scrum Master CSM, or Certified Scrum Master can still be interesting locations to explore.

What is the average PMI-ACP salary based on Different countries?

The PMI-ACP salary varies by country, and the top countries where a Certified Agile professional can get a competitive salary are the USA, UK, Canada, India, and Australia. So, let’s take a look at how much a PMI-ACP will earn on average in these countries.

PMI-ACP Salary in Various Job Roles

An Agile Certified Professional can work in various job roles based on their skills and experience. The table below shows the PMI-ACP salary for the top Agile Certified Professional job roles.

PMI-ACP Salary Based on Years of Experience

The more experience you gain, the better pay you can earn as a PMI-ACP. So let’s look at how much a Certified Agile practitioner can earn based on their years of experience.

What a Certified Project Management Professional Gets Paid in Top Companies

With the high demand for Agile professionals, many top companies are constantly looking for PMI Agile Certified Professionals. The top companies globally that employ Certified Scrum Masters are AT&T, Accenture, Bank of America, etc. In conclusion, the below table shows how much the top companies across the globe are paying a Certified Agile Professional.

In short, this article first introduces PMI-ACP certification, then discusses why we need agile management, and finally introduces some job opportunities for ACP Certified Scrummasters in the United States and other countries. Achieving PMI-ACP certification is an asset. Many companies worldwide value this certificate. This is especially true of PMI-ACP certification because it covers a much faster process. Also, it teaches you many agile skills, tools, and techniques that are necessary to plan, execute and effectively complete an agile project. Enroll in the PMI-ACP Certification training of 591Lab for the rich learning experience and advanced skills in the project management domain.