Hi Andrew,
You can qualify for PMI-ACP, even from a finance background, as long as you frame your past initiatives through the lens of Agile values and principles.
How to Show Agile Experience Without the Label??
- Iterative Delivery / Continuous Improvement: Did you deliver work in phases and adapt based on feedback? For example, You led a finance reporting automation where you deployed incrementally, tested with users, and improved workflows based on their input.
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Agile values team collaboration over silos. Example: You worked across accounting, IT, and compliance to revamp a process — co-creating solutions, adjusting plans midstream.
- Retrospectives / Lessons Learned: If you held regular reviews or “post-mortems” and used them to improve your approach — that’s Agile thinking.
- Short Feedback Loops: Did you involve stakeholders early and often? Example: Presented dashboard mock-ups, got stakeholder input, revised the approach — that's Agile in action.
- Managing Workflow Visually: If you used Trello, Jira, Excel Kanban boards, or any visual tracking to manage tasks and prioritize flow — that's Lean/Agile practice.
Use Agile terms to describe your real work — don’t worry that the project wasn't "Scrum" or didn't have sprints. PMI cares more about the practices and mindset than formal roles.
If you want help rewording specific examples from your resume or projects for the application, you can use AI tools like ChatGPT (or) reach out to anyone from a similar background whose application was accepted in recent times.