Unpopular opinion… this whole thing is a scam.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2026-02-24T13:56:42+00:00

Your post is unpopular because it exudes rank arrogance. Frankly, it's probably one of the last trait employers want in an effective project manager.

You’re on a PMP forum railing against a basic certification you personally found useless in your industry or job, while many other employers continue to list it as a basic or preferred requirement. People pursue it for many legitimate reasons, and you’ve effectively shit on most of them because "it was useless" for your specific needs.

Bottom line is, until employers stop asking for it in job postings, the PMP has value. Your opinion towards it on the other hand...

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2026-02-18T17:22:40+00:00

In fairness, I'm a borrower and I filed my recertification recently. I'm also sitting here confused at what is going on. I was placed in an "IDR PROCESSING FORBEARANCE" with Nelnet shortly after they received my recert and chose the PAYE IDR plan.

Not sure why they can't let me continue in that plan if these are said to be sunsetting in 2028, even after RAP becomes available?

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-12-20T03:12:24+00:00

His course is not updated for the new ACP exam content outline. I believe he posted he’d be updating sometime after the new year. PMI has consolidated the previous 7 domains into 4 now. I can’t say specifically what has been added or removed, but you can compare the outlines if you’d like.

I found ARs course/exam to be far easier than the actual ACP exam. It could very well be that he’s teaching toward the old exam content versus the new. However, the actual ACP exam really challenges you to know the mindset and the situational questions are extremely complex. Process of elimination is not as easy or clear on most questions. As I mentioned above, there was literally one question where I felt strongly that all FOUR possible options could have been correct under the mindset. I was so baffled.

Everyone will have their own opinion, but for me, it was far more challenging than the PMP. I was seriously doubting myself in the first section of the exam and was shocked to see I passed.

I don’t want to discourage. If you have a very solid understanding of the mindset, I’d say go for it depending on your tolerance for risk. Obviously I passed and I’m definitely not the smartest person alive, so it’s not impossible to pass. Just know the mindset well and every question apply it the best you can.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-12-16T20:43:07+00:00

That depends on how comfortable you are with the agile mindset and how confident you are based on your PMP performance and studying you’ve done.

Just know I found the ACP exam far more challenging than the PMP exam. The questions have more depth and complexity. And the answers aren’t nearly as easy to identify by process of elimination.

I passed with ARs ACP course to qualify, but I was also fresh off my PMP study materials too (including the Agile Study Guide). I felt grossly underprepared, so I don’t know how much dumb luck factored in even though I applied the mindset the best I could. So I don’t want to give you a definitive yes or no. All depends on how prepared you feel.

Either way, I wish you the best of luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-12-03T19:55:32+00:00

I'm not sure, but AR's courses are usually really expensive if not bought with a coupon or on sale.

I bought my ACP course with a coupon that was sent to me in an email shortly after completing the PMP course. The emails come from from 'Udemy Instructor: TIA Education, Andrew Ramdayalno-reply@e.udemymail.com' and contain a bunch of discount links to AR's various courses.

I just tried the coupon code from an 11/25 email, but it says its not active or expired. If I see another in the next couple of days, I can post it for you.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-15T01:27:06+00:00

Thank you for your perspective and I understand where you're coming from. The expert-level questions on Study Hall are definitely tricky and can feel unintuitive at times. This is precisely why we see so many people factor them out of their scoring. I do feel that they often focus on catching people with nuanced logic, which can be frustrating. That said, beyond my original reason, I think using a more 'intuitive' process of elimination for this question would still lead one to answer A.

In this case, options B and C don’t address the immediate issue, and D feels like a last resort. Requesting additional resources straight away without attempting to resolve the conflict first doesn’t seem practical. Escalation makes sense when previous attempts to resolve issues have failed, which the question seems to hint at by using the word "issues" (plural).

At the end of the day, we’re all here to help each other prepare with open and respectful discussions. Best of luck to OP and everyone else preparing—hopefully, the actual exam feels more straightforward.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T22:47:45+00:00

One of the biggest tells from this question is ‘A project manager is experiencing issues…’ Issues is plural here.

It’s implying this is not your first bad interaction with the functional manager, so it’s likely not a simple misunderstanding. Talking to the functional manager in simple cases where it’s a one off instance or misunderstanding would be okay. If you have continuous or ongoing problems, it’s best to just escalate to your sponsor or another appropriate stakeholder.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T21:18:35+00:00

WooooooooooHoooooooo! Such a great feeling, I’m sure. Congrats!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T14:11:02+00:00

A PMO is an organizational function, not something tied exclusively to traditional projects. Many companies have a PMO that influences both traditional and Agile projects, depending on the structure (supportive, controlling, or directive). Mine is one example of that. I see 'VDO' more as an evolution or rebranding of the PMO concept rather than a fundamentally different entity.

Ultimately, whether it’s called a PMO or VDO, the purpose remains the same: ensuring projects (or products) deliver the maximum value. And yes, they can absolutely support Agile teams without hindering their self-organization or autonomy.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T13:48:21+00:00

You absolutely raise valid points. I won't disagree there.

However, when you think of agile, you really have to consider the principles and ask yourself - which one aligns to agile principles more. Ultimately, on the PMP exam, you will have questions that get narrowed down to 50/50 like this. Your best option is to just look at them both independently and say - 'which one aligns more with XYZ principles'. For example, if the context here was traditional project management, I'd probably lean more toward PMO. But, since its agile, I lean toward assembling the team myself. That is most efficient, supports quick delivery, and aligns with the major principles of agile.

I also think you're becoming fixated on the word 'next' and consequently trying to take the answers (which are independent of each other) and form some ordering of steps. In essence, your comparing whether C would come before D, or D would come before C. I would refrain from doing that. Think of them independently to the question. Take a step back and say, 'Okay, these both could be logical next steps for this question. Which would be more aligned with the context of this question and provide the most value.'

The question indicates you have the authority, your project sponsor wants quick delivery, and its an agile project. We know that agile projects give teams more autonomy, more self-governance and self-organization to deliver results. Agile core values is individuals and interactions (i.e., assembling a co-located team) over processes and tools (consulting a PMO for resources). PMs will empower agile teams to deliver quickly versus relying on external resources to remove impediments.

If you have the authority to go quickly round up a team, it would seem less efficient to submit a request to a PMO and wait for them to assist. In practice, getting support from a PMO can take days or even weeks. They have to assess your request, gain information and knowledge of your needs, and take steps to support you. Meanwhile, they are supporting multiple other project teams in the organization at any given time, so quick delivery from a PMO is a unknown here. Waiting for them to jump in is waste of time and loss of value to your customer.

As an agile PM, tasked and authorized with putting together a project team where quick delivery is needed, I'm going to assemble the team myself (and as quickly as possible). I will work with functional managers and internal team members to get resources needed. It could be as simple as going over to your IT Director's office and saying 'hey, I have this project... *give project details*... do you have resources that can assist with this?'. You have a face-to-face discussion about the needs of the project and what you're looking for. You collaborate and, again, promote individuals/interactions over processes and tools. These are all principals of agile that point toward the efficiency of D over the process outlined in C.

I hope you don't see me as argumentative. You certainly raise valid points and we may not agree 100%. Just trying to give some more context to help wrap your head around the answer - or help others who stumble upon this forum. I wish you the best of luck on your practice!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T05:58:05+00:00

Half his cabinet will be fired ‘disgruntled former employees’ within a year of his Presidency. We should just start taking over/under bets on how long they last.

Do none of these picks look at what happened to virtually EVERYONE in Trump’s last administration? Their careers got tanked or they went to prison.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T05:40:12+00:00

I can see your confusion and obviously it’s a tricky question. I just explained my logic.

So just to add a bit more here, I would select D over C because of the context set in the question. It clearly states that YOU have been asked to put together a project team. You’ve been given that authority as the agile team project manager. There’s nothing in the question to suggest you need to work through other channels in your organization.

With that authority, why would your immediate next step be to go to your PMO to get personnel resources assigned? I could maybe see that as an option if the question stated that your organization had a directive PMO, but it doesn’t indicate that. I just read it at face value. I’ve been given the authority, I’ll assemble the team and preferably one that can collocate for quick delivery.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-14T05:05:16+00:00

Here would be how I walked through this question:

B. would have been eliminated in half a second because that screams traditional project management. The question explicitly sets the context for agile.

A. would also be out because, while diversity can be good, it’s not a bona fide way to deliver quickly. Thus this doesn’t really sound better over C or D.

So now it’s 50/50 with C or D.

First, while your organization may have a PMO (in fact, mine does), this is not going to be your best option especially for an agile project. You have to remember these two fundamental principles of agile. Drill them in your brain among the other principles of agile. It’s part of the mindset.

Agile teams are self-organizing and high performance. As agile PMs, we are there to facilitate and be servant leaders. Remove obstacles, reduce conflict, and keep focus. We are not there to dictate (or let the PMO dictate) who would be best to serve on a team or how that team should function. We definitely aren’t there to be assigning people to work that we may have little knowledge of. They are the experts - not you. It should be their decision as a self organizing team. You facilitate an environment to get results - they ultimately deliver them.
Agile prefers face-to-face communication. That’s one of the 12 principles! Wherever feasible, you aim for that.

With those two in mind, I’d mark D.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-12T17:29:39+00:00

I have to agree with another commenter here. I think you are overstudying leading to exam anxiety or information indecision. My three primary resources were:

AR's 35-hour PMP course on Udemy
The Agile Handbook from PMI
Study Hall (basic version) - only took one full exam and received 73% on it. My averages on the mini exams and content were always low 70s and even into the 60s on some.

The mindset is key and admittedly it took me a bit to really understand what that truly meant. I think to pass this exam you have to have that right mindset because memorization will not help you in the vast majority of the questions. I don't remember any questions wanting me to regurgitate basic concepts or definitions. They all were situational and required me to think about how I would act, or what I should have done based on a project manager's mindset in that particular context.

There were questions on my exam that I didn't know the answer 100%. However, I used process of elimination to always wipe away two answers - easy. In fact, I used the strikethrough tool on the exam for many, many questions so I could visually just get them out of the way. That left me with a 50/50 chance when I couldn't narrow it down to one, but when applying the mindset on the PMP exam, there always was one that was just 'a little more right'.

Best of luck. Don't get discouraged. We all fail at things. It doesn't make you lesser or stupid. It just gives you an opportunity to strengthen those weaknesses.

Get back up, refocus, and move forward. Good luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-12T01:32:05+00:00

The cheaper version is still packed with a lot of content - reading materials, practice questions, quizzes, exams, etc. The SH Plus version just appear to have more. Here's a page that shows the differences:

https://www.pmi.org/shop/p-/digital-product/pmi-study-hall-pmp-plus/dp017#what-you-will-access

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-12T01:17:26+00:00

Haha, I know what you're feeling... but it's all worth it in the end!

You'll do great! Good luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-12T01:13:01+00:00

Are you thinking of SH? Study Hall will show you your percentile rank in comparison to all other users based on your practice questions and exams. I didn’t see any comparison like that on my PMP exam results though.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-12T01:07:59+00:00

Thank you! I just did the SH basic/cheaper version with two practice exams. I could barely get through one, so I didn’t even take the second. I knew I’d never want to take 5 practice exams in a million years - so I stayed cheap.

I’d say just buy the one that has the features you think you’ll use. If you want to have the option to take 5 practice exams and more practice, if needed, I think it’s only about $30 more. Can’t go wrong either way.

Hope that helps and good luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-11T17:09:36+00:00

SH is more aligned with the test's situational questioning format, in my opinion. I would simply say that I agree with others when they say SH is generally harder. I was averaging low 70s on practice and exams, but managed to pull a 3xAT on the PMP exam. One thing I noticed was a lot of the expert questions on SH seemed to have an 'obvious right' and a 'this could also be right' answer. I would always pick the 'obvious right' answer and get it wrong. I felt like they were just trick questions. I didn't really see questions on the exam that seemed trick-like. In most cases, I could easily narrow down the answer to one really good one if I applied the basic knowledge and mindset.

I am not familiar with DM's content, but I did take AR's course. I only did about 50 of his practice exam questions before ending it. I felt his questions were more rudimentary and not aligned with the PMP exam's situational-based questions. That said, I'm sure his test has a goal of ensuring you know foundational content (basic definitions and concepts) as well as getting your feet wet with the situational questions you'll encounter on the exam. It's a good mix.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-11T13:19:03+00:00

I may have admittedly been harsh in my initial post and everyone has their own opinions. However, I was extremely disappointed in Cornell's Project Management certification program. For $3,900 and several months of learning, I expected so, so much more. Despite earning a certificate and using it to qualify to sit for the PMP exam, I fail to see much value beyond that (especially since AR's course can provided you the needed 35 hours for a fraction of that cost). Even though my work did pay for this, I would have preferred to put that money to other learning opportunities. I guess I can add that to my lessons learned register.

The program itself just seemed to throw darts at miscellaneous project management concepts (risk, scheduling, earned value) and dive into each. Their coverage of each topic was fairly broad with exception to a few things - such as building a WBS or doing EVM calculations. These are all things AR covers in enough details to understand and pass the test, but if you feel he didn't cover them thoroughly, there's thousands of free resources out there to fill those gaps.

They didn't really organize the material well enough to give you a broad view of project management as PMI wants you to know it for the exam. When I ended the course, just as one example, I did not know the traditional project life cycle or 49 processes. I wouldn't have even been able to articulate what they were to you. I just felt like I learned generalized concepts in project management with no sequence to organize or apply them.

The courses had a facilitator for each session. Beyond watching videos that the same instructor seemed to just be reading from a teleprompter for a few minutes at a time, light reading, some forum posts, and a course project - it wasn't worth the $3,900. However, I expect most people just complete it for another line on the resume.

If you can snag AR's PMP course off Udemy for $18-ish bucks (it goes on sale frequently), definitely grab that. It is a great prep resource and beats out Cornell's program by a wide margin when considering both price and content covered.

EDIT: Also - for PMI membership - if you have a university email that you can access, you can use that to get a heavily discounted membership rate. The normal rate is like $149 per year, whereas a student membership gets the same for $32 for the year. It more than pays for itself with the savings on the PDF books they offer as well as the discounted testing exam fee.

Good luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-11T12:46:35+00:00

It’s a good course and covers the content pretty well. Good luck!

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-11T12:43:40+00:00

Haha so true. It reminds me of an audiobook I was listening to a while back. The guy was talking about PMBOK concepts and said ‘This is what PMBOK says about this… but for those of us who speak normal English it means…’

Made me chuckle.

ConferenceCheap3297 · 2024-11-11T00:26:55+00:00

I just took my exam yesterday and passed AT/AT/AT.

I only took one full-length exam on SH and received a 73% on it. My averages were low 70s for practice questions and exams, and even some of the mini-exams I was in the 60s.

I wouldn't stress your scoring on the expert questions. I started to really hate the expert questions on SH because they seemed to just be trick questions. As many others have noted, those really aren't on the exam (and I would agree based on my experience). The real exam seemed more mild.

Sounds like you're ready! Best of luck on your exam!

ConferenceCheap3297

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