PMI-ACP Tools and Techniques: Product Quality

The first thing to know is what PMI-ACP stands for. The Project Management Institute (PMI) offers PMI-ACP certification, which “recognizes a person’s expertise in using agile practices in their projects while demonstrating their increased professional versatility through agile tools and techniques.” 

To put it another way, you are a PMI Agile Certified Practitioner once you have passed the PMI-ACP exam. By passing the PMI-ACP Exam, you can demonstrate to potential employers and others in the agile community and beyond that, you know agile practices, principles, tools, and techniques especially product quality, as well as proven experience working on agile projects.

Are You a Good Fit for Agile Project Management Certification?

How can you determine, secondly, whether taking the PMI-ACP Exam is the best course of action for you? To start, you must want to become a PMI-ACP. The next step is to confirm that you match the four criteria for PMI-ACP certification: educational background, broad project experience, agile project experience, and agile techniques training. 

A secondary degree is required for educational background (high school diploma, associate’s degree, or international equivalent). You must have had at least 2,000 hours—or 12 months—of general project experience over the previous five years to qualify in the category of general project experience.

You must have at least 1,500 hours (8 months) of experience working on project teams primarily using Agile methodology within the previous three years to qualify in the Agile project experience category. 

You cannot count the same hours or projects for general project experience as you may for Agile project experience, so keep that in mind. Finally, you must have at least 21 Contact Hours in the area of Agile practice training. An hour of formal education, in this case, formal education in Agile practices is referred to as a “contact hour.”

You can begin your application to take the PMI-ACP Exam once you have all of your general project and Agile project hours documented and your 21 contact hours. If you choose to submit your application online, you will have 90 days to do so. 

The 2000 hours of general project experience requirement for the PMI-ACP Exam is waived if you already hold the Project Management Professional (PMP) or Program Management Professional (PgMP) credentials. PMI has already confirmed this.

How should I prepare for the PMI-ACP Exam?

What should you anticipate from the exam now that you are aware of what PMI-ACP stands for and the prerequisites to take the exam? There are 120 multiple-choice questions on the PMI-ACP Exam, and you have three hours to complete them. 

The PMI-ACP Exam has two sections with questions in each. Agile knowledge and skills are covered in the other half of the exam questions, while tools and techniques are covered in the first half. With PMI ACP bootcamp on Eduhubspot you will learn more about the exam.

Product Quality

Verification is used to show how each stage of the process—from PRS to SRS, SRS to code, etc.—satisfies the conditions established by the previous stage of product quality. We’ll need to as we write the code,

1) Verify that everything functions flawlessly;

2) Be able to demonstrate that it does so through documentation and an audit trail.

We’ll utilize agile methodologies to complete it in real-time and just-in-time, but we’ll still need to confirm the code functions as planned and be able to show traceability from the user stories or epics. Verifications are completed before validation, which occurs at the end of the development phase. It provides an answer to questions like, “Am I creating the correct product?”

Validation is the “end run” on quality in which we assess the system increment against its functional and non-functional product-level requirements to ensure that it performs as intended. For effective validation, we must at the very least incorporate the activities listed below. 

User stories should be combined into a version-controlled, final statement. Add user story increments to a traditional document, database, or repository to create an SRS Document.

Test Driven Development

It is a method that depends on repeatedly going through a brief development cycle. The developer creates an automated test case that initially fails and describes the desired enhancement or new function. They then write the bare minimum of code necessary to pass the test, and ultimately they rework the new code to meet acceptable standards of product quality.

In TDD, we express our goals twice, first with a test and then with production code, expressing the same concept in two separate ways. They were probably both successfully coded if they matched. If they don’t, something is incorrect. The extreme programming principles of test-first programming and test-driven development are related.

Red block

It demonstrates that the first and only line of code should be written to support the current increment of behavior, which is often no more than five lines. If it requires more, that’s alright; simply aim for a smaller increment the following time. 

Run your full set of tests after the test has been coded, then see the new test fail. Most TDD testing tools will display a red progress bar as a result of this. This is your first chance to contrast your intentions with what is taking place. Something is wrong if the test passes or if it fails differently than you anticipated.

Your test might be flawed or fail to test the things you expected it to. Investigate the issue; you must always be able to anticipate what the code will do.

Green

Write only enough production code in the green bar to pass the test. Once more, you should typically just require four to five lines of code. Don’t bother about conceptual elegance or design simplicity; just take the necessary steps to pass the exam. You get another chance to assess how your intentions match up with events.

Return as soon as you can to known-good code if the test fails. Often, by giving the code you just write a second glance, you or your partner can identify the issue. Consider removing the modified code and trying again if you are unable to identify the issue. Since the new test only has a few lines of code, it is sometimes preferable to remove it and restart the cycle with a smaller increment.

Refactor

Now that all of your tests are passing once again, you can refactor without concern about breaking anything. Examine the code and search for potential upgrades. See if your navigator has any notes. Refactoring the code will allow you to fix each issue you find. Work in a succession of tiny tasks. 

You can refactor as often as you wish. Make your design as good as you can while keeping it inside the bounds of the code’s current behavior. Don’t plan for the future and don’t add any new behaviors. Refactoring shouldn’t alter behavior, keep that in mind. A failing test is required for new behavior.

To sum up, in test-driven development (TDD), you must first create a test that fails before you create new functional code. TDD is being quickly embraced by agile software developers for the creation of application source code, and it is even being embraced by agile DBAs for the creation of databases.

This procedure dispels presumptions and verifies that everyone shares the same definition of “Done.” The technical team writes code to wire the natural-language Acceptance Tests to the developing software during implementation.

An ATDD Cycle’s phases

Discuss

In this phase of the ATDD cycle, the agile team and the business stakeholder participants engage in conversation. In the course of the debate, the team gained a thorough grasp of the system’s behavior from the perspective of the user.

Distill

Agile attempts to implement the acceptance tests in an automated testing framework at this step of the ATDD cycle. The team will make sure that the tests can be carried out in the project at this stage and not just remain specified.

Develop

The agile team employs a Test First Development TFD methodology throughout this stage, which entails running the tests first to identify any issues before moving on to build the code necessary to pass the tests.

Demo

The agile team gives a demo to the business stakeholders during this phase of the ATDD cycle. They can also mention the tests they’ve run and the vulnerabilities they’ve discovered through the tests in the demo. This is how an agile ATDD cycle functions.

Agile definition of done

A Definition of Done is a precise and succinct collection of specifications that software must meet for the team to declare it finished. Acceptance Criteria apply to a particular user narrative, while the DoD typically applies to all items in the backlog. Both the DoD and acceptance criteria must be satisfied for the narrative to be finished. A product increment is not complete until this list has been satisfied.

Continuous Integration

Developers are required to integrate code into a common repository numerous times per day as part of the development approach known as continuous integration. After that, an automatic build verifies each check-in, enabling teams to spot issues early on. Integrating often enables quick error detection and easier error location. 

Teams who use continuous integration want to accomplish two things. Reduce the time and effort spent on “each” integration episode being able to deliver a release-ready version of the product “at any point” Technologies for version control, team standards and practices, and tools made expressly to assist with continuous integration are used to achieve CI. 

The purpose of continuous integration is to detect issues rapidly so that each developer may receive feedback on their work. There must then be a method of evaluation.

Programmers should never leave anything unintegrated at the end of the day, according to a widely accepted CI guideline. Never let the construct become stuck in a broken condition overnight. 

Programming teams are forced to practice disciplined task planning as a result. There is a natural incentive to check code in frequently throughout the day if the team’s rule is that whoever breaks the build at check-in has to fix it again.