TOPIC: More Agile Questions Reported than usual in Recent PMP

Dear Team,

Do you think the proportion of questions on Agile has gone up significantly in the recent past?

Some of the candidates I spoke to have faced at least around 25 questions on Agile in their exam.

The feedback from another candidate was even more shocking. He is extremely sure that he got more than 50 questions on Agile. This seems to be an outlier and

needs further confirmation from more candidates.

What is your opinion? Do you think the exam is shifting towards Agile too early? Has PMI started using the 2019 exam content outline earlier than they are supposed to?

Regards
Gopinath

Gopinath:

I would advise a tremendous amount of caution if you're trying to game the PMP exam in this fashion. Here is my reasoning:

1. The test bank at PMI is, presumably, huge and probability of any two exams being the same is just about zero.
2. Agile and traditional waterfall have a substantial amount of common elements and cross-over. Personally, I found it very difficult to categorically state if a question was Agile-related unless it had a give-away such as "iterative" or some other clearly stated agile principle. I would find it difficult to attribute 50 questions of an intense, four-hour exam specifically to Agile methodology.
3. I have found PMI to always be a professional organization in that they don't tend to mess with people,. I will take them at their word that the PMP exam content has not changed and will not change until 1/1/2021.
4. The reporter may very well have drawn the short stick and got a lot of Agile-related questions.
5. A basic knowledge of Agile methodology is required the current PMP exam already.

My advice would be to stay the course and prepare using the current tools. If you try to game it and focus mainly on Agile without understanding the core content of the PMBOK, you will probably lose in the long run.

My 2-cents worth only here.

Harry

Harry,

I wish I shared your feelings of the PMP exam but I would have to side with Gopinath.

I've made my first attempt about a month ago and failing that attempt because I was taken aback by number and difficulty of Agile questions on the exam! During my studies there was light emphasis on Agile but everything I've learned up until that point was enough to get me past the types of agile questions on Prepcast however when it came to the exam I was clueless on the vast majority of them. I don't have exact numbers but I would have guessed my exam had +40 agile questions with terminology I've never come across, you simply don't know what you don't know. Since then I've read over the Agile Practice Guide and personally don't feel it's written in a way that it would be helpful to an exam taker almost to the point where PMI is looking for ways to increase the failure rate to take in more revenue. Reading over the success stories on here and Reddit, my Prepcast scores have been as high if not higher. I know I can pass the PMP but it's irritating knowing the resources I've put into preparing I could still end up with the short stick.

Mark and Gopinath,

The only response I can offer is "Ugh!"

While it's clear from PMI that current PMP aspirants are responsible to know "about" agile methods and application, the depth of that knowledge has always appeared to be pretty thin.

I just don't know in this case.

The first few agile questions I had no idea I follow the advice on how to tackle unfamiliar questions, but as I ran into more I began to think maybe it's a seeded question. However when it got to the point where I realized I've observed over 30 agile related questions I knew there was no chance all of my seeded questions were agile based. As the exam progressed and I saw even more agile questions my confidence got shaky until the last screen that confirmed my suspicions that I had failed.

After this experience I've made a few adjustments and have continued to plug away at the simulator. I would mostly agree the questions in the simulator are reasonably close to the actual exam (the simulator calculating questions are much longer and more difficult) however for aspirants like myself who do not have a professional working background in agile and the expectation PMI has for the subject matter based off the APG I believe puts individuals at a disadvantage.

Yes, I've failed my first attempt last month and I've reported almost 25-30 agile questions.
Unfortunately I've never read agile practice guide before the exam.
I've was unconfortable also with situational questions and i 've purchased prepcast simulator but in addition now I'm studying also agile pmi guide.

I am happy to report back that after my second attempt I passed with T/AT/AT/AT/T.

It would seem that first time exam takers like myself that run into an absurdly high number of agile questions have in fact just drew the short straw. My second attempt had all of *ONE* single agile question and it was crazy easy, in fact I didn't know what to make of the exam cause about one quarter of the questions were straight definitions, another quarter were basic process ordering, and the rest were basic to moderately difficult situational questions that in my opinion were for the most part easier than those found in Prepcast! Having said that, for PMI to make a random number of people write an exam that closer resembles the PMBOK 7 when you're told to study off 6 seems kind of sketchy to me, if it's unintentional they really need to fix it, else it feels a bit unethical to me.

End of the day Prepcast is an invaluable tool for preparing individuals attempting the current exam standard and I still firmly believe the questions are more or less in line with the actual exam if not a bit longer.

Mark,

Congratulations!

I don't know how one would study PMBOK 7 yet? it's not been published. Not due out until Q4 of 2020. See here: www.pmi.org/about/blog/new-7th-edition-pmbok-guide

Harry