TOPIC: How did you bridge the gap between practice and theory for Agile?

Hey folks,

I’ve been in dev for 10+ years and work in Agile teams every day but studying for the PMI-ACP is seriously messing with my head.

The terms feel familiar, but the concepts just won’t stick. It’s like I do Agile, but I can’t seem to explain Agile the PMI way. How did you bridge the gap between practice and theory? Help!77

Very good question Warren! I found I was able to make the conceptual vs reality connect by starting to name what I currently do after the PMI concepts and practices.

Example; my company would have a daily standup where we talk with the engineers about task details, delivery dates, and action items. Our company just never called this a Scrum. We would have one of the Project coordinators lead the daily call, based on who was available, assign the task and set priority, but they were never considered the Scrum Master.

When I started to go through the Agile principles and teachings, and began to codify my life based off the teachings in the PMBOK, it became a lot easier to become fluent in PMI. I would even try to identify things that aren’t related to work per se and identify a relationship (coaching youth football, and improving our sideline effectiveness by having a bi-weekly coaches meetings to discuss what each position coach is doing and working towards).

Hope this helps! Wishing you the best on your journey!