PMI-ACP® Syllabus — Learning Objectives by Domain

Use this syllabus as your PMI-ACP® coverage checklist. Work through each domain and practice immediately after each task set.

What’s covered

• Mindset (28%)
• Leadership (25%)
• Product (19%)
• Delivery (28%)

Mindset (28%)

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Task 1 — Experiment Early

• Explain why early experimentation reduces delivery risk and increases learning velocity in uncertain environments.
• Select an appropriate experiment type (prototype, spike, MVP slice) to validate solution feasibility or market need.
• Define success criteria and timebox for an experiment so results are decision-ready.
• Build an increment that is small enough to learn quickly yet representative enough to validate assumptions.
• Identify signals that invalidate assumptions and decide whether to pivot, persevere, or stop the initiative.
• Create an environment that encourages safe-to-try experiments, learning, and iteration without blame.
• Document experiment outcomes and integrate learning into backlog refinement and planning decisions.
• Communicate experiment results to stakeholders in terms of evidence, trade-offs, and next decisions.

Task 2 — Embrace Agile Mindset

• Describe how agile values and principles guide decisions about collaboration, delivery cadence, and change handling.
• Classify a scenario using complexity thinking and identify implications for how the team should plan and adapt.
• Apply a complexity method (CAS, Stacey Matrix, Cynefin) to determine whether work is simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic.
• Explain risks of using overly predictive approaches in complex domains and overly adaptive approaches in simple domains.
• Interpret the output of agile suitability tools and translate results into practical delivery approach choices.
• Select an agile model or framework appropriate to context (team size, constraints, product volatility, governance).
• Tailor practices and artifacts without violating core agile principles or reducing transparency.
• Identify signals that a chosen approach is mismatched and propose a better fit based on evidence.

Task 3 — Promote Collaborative Team Environment

• Create a shared team vision that connects day-to-day work to outcomes and customer value.
• Draft working agreements that define collaboration norms, decision-making, and Definition of Done/Ready expectations.
• Identify characteristics of high-performing teams and select interventions to move the team toward that state.
• Facilitate retrospectives that generate specific, owned improvement actions rather than generic observations.
• Use collaboration practices to reduce silos and improve cross-functional flow (pairing, mobbing, shared ownership).
• Demonstrate commitment to team decisions while constructively raising concerns through agreed channels.
• Assess the team’s understanding of agile and tailor coaching, practices, and ceremonies to maturity level.
• Choose an inter-team coordination approach (scrum of scrums, team of teams) based on dependencies and integration needs.

Task 4 — Build Transparency

• Identify what information must be transparent for decision-making (progress, risks, impediments, learning, and quality).
• Design information radiators that make status and process visible without requiring special access or interpretation.
• Establish feedback loops that convert transparency into action (daily sync, reviews, retrospectives, metrics reviews).
• Select communication strategies suitable for co-located and distributed teams (cadence, tooling, synchronous vs asynchronous).
• Detect when transparency is distorted by vanity metrics, hidden work, or unclear definitions and correct the system.
• Ensure risk and impediment visibility includes ownership, next actions, and escalation thresholds.
• Promote transparency across roles by aligning on shared definitions (Done, Ready, priority, risk severity).
• Use transparent progress evidence to renegotiate scope, sequencing, or release expectations with stakeholders.

Task 5 — Foster Psychological Safety

• Explain how psychological safety improves learning, candor, and quality outcomes in agile delivery.
• Promote a no-blame culture by separating problems from people and encouraging objective evidence over attribution.
• Facilitate dialogue over debate to surface assumptions, constraints, and trade-offs constructively.
• Solicit and provide constructive feedback using specific examples and agreed improvement actions.
• Create mechanisms that make it safe to raise risks, impediments, and quality concerns early.
• Encourage the team to challenge the status quo using experiments and retrospectives rather than escalation battles.
• Detect safety breakdown signals (silence, fear of reporting, blame) and intervene with coaching and structure.
• Model behaviors that reinforce safety (curiosity, humility, transparency, follow-through).

Task 6 — Shorten Feedback Loops

• Explain why shortened feedback loops reduce rework and improve product-market fit.
• Include stakeholders from day one by designing review and discovery touchpoints into cadence.
• Maximize value within a fixed timeframe by slicing work into testable increments and prioritizing learning.
• Select tools and techniques to shorten feedback (design thinking, lean startup, prototype testing) for a given scenario.
• Design acceptance criteria and validation checks that produce fast, unambiguous feedback.
• Use early feedback to refine backlog ordering, scope, and Definition of Done/Ready.
• Identify bottlenecks that slow feedback (handoffs, approvals, environment delays) and propose mitigations.
• Communicate feedback outcomes as decisions and next actions rather than raw comments.

Task 7 — Embrace Change

• Promote a growth mindset by framing change as learning and adaptation rather than failure.
• Respond to changing requirements by reordering backlog and re-planning within agreed cadence and constraints.
• Adapt processes and ceremonies based on evidence from retrospectives and delivery outcomes.
• Encourage and model cross-skilling to reduce bottlenecks and enable resilient delivery (generalizing specialists).
• Evaluate change requests against value, risk, and capacity to choose the best response strategy.
• Use transparency and metrics to explain the impact of change on scope, schedule, and quality trade-offs.
• Adapt product decisions based on learning and feedback while maintaining alignment to vision and goals.
• Identify anti-patterns that resist change (rigid handoffs, local optimization) and propose corrective actions.

Leadership (25%)

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Task 1 — Empower Teams

• Create an environment of trust by enabling transparent communication and clear decision-making.
• Select motivation techniques that encourage experimentation and appropriate risk-taking without compromising quality.
• Apply coaching and mentoring approaches to improve team capability, autonomy, and accountability.
• Promote collective ownership of goals and outcomes rather than role-silo ownership of tasks.
• Differentiate training, coaching, and mentoring and choose the right approach for a given maturity gap.
• Use emotional intelligence techniques to support empathy, influence, conflict de-escalation, and collaboration.
• Interpret non-verbal cues in team interactions and adjust facilitation to improve understanding and inclusion.
• Use self-assessment tools output to identify team capability gaps and propose targeted improvement actions.

Task 2 — Facilitate Problem Resolution

• Diagnose problems by separating symptoms from causes and collecting evidence from the system.
• Apply root-cause analysis techniques (Five Whys, Ishikawa/fishbone) to identify systemic drivers.
• Facilitate team selection of resolution strategies that maximize value and minimize unintended consequences.
• Decide when to timebox investigation, run an experiment, or escalate based on severity and impact.
• Ensure problem resolution includes ownership, next actions, and verification criteria.
• Track resolution progress transparently and remove blockers that prevent timely closure.
• Evaluate solution effectiveness and prevent recurrence through process or working agreement changes.
• Document learnings and integrate them into standards, playbooks, and onboarding where appropriate.

Task 3 — Promote Knowledge Sharing

• Design an environment that captures and shares knowledge continuously (retrospectives, communities of practice).
• Select lightweight documentation practices that preserve learning without slowing flow.
• Leverage organizational knowledge assets from similar initiatives to avoid rework and repeated mistakes.
• Create explicit time and cadence for knowledge sharing, updates, and learning review.
• Identify when knowledge gaps create delivery risk and propose targeted learning or pairing interventions.
• Establish feedback loops that keep shared assets current (templates, decision records, runbooks).
• Encourage cross-team knowledge transfer to reduce silos and improve integration outcomes.
• Measure knowledge-sharing effectiveness using adoption signals and improvements in delivery performance.

Task 4 — Promote Agile Mindset Principles and Practices

• Create awareness of agile values and principles by connecting them to real decisions and outcomes.
• Identify behaviors that indicate agile alignment versus agile theater and coach toward meaningful practices.
• Foster an environment for continuous improvement through regular inspection and adaptation.
• Recognize and celebrate agile behavior that improves collaboration, transparency, learning, and delivery.
• Use storytelling and evidence to influence stakeholders who prefer predictive control models.
• Tailor practices to context while maintaining the intent of agile principles (value delivery, feedback, flow).
• Detect drift from principles (overloaded WIP, hidden work, delayed feedback) and propose corrective steps.
• Reinforce agile habits through working agreements, coaching, and consistent governance expectations.

Task 5 — Promote Shared Vision and Purpose

• Facilitate a common understanding of product purpose and vision across stakeholders and the team.
• Translate vision into clear near-term objectives that guide backlog prioritization and trade-offs.
• Ensure ongoing work remains aligned with vision and organizational goals through reviews and metrics.
• Continuously communicate vision and purpose using consistent messages tailored to audience needs.
• Identify misalignment signals (conflicting priorities, churn, scope creep) and drive realignment conversations.
• Use artifacts (product roadmap, outcome metrics) to keep vision actionable rather than aspirational.
• Balance competing stakeholder demands by anchoring decisions to agreed outcomes and constraints.
• Validate that increments and releases deliver value consistent with the vision and adjust plans accordingly.

Task 6 — Facilitate Conflict Management

• Identify the root cause and level of conflict (task, process, relationship; low to high intensity) from scenario cues.
• Select facilitation approaches that promote collaboration and de-escalation while protecting outcomes.
• Use shared goals, data, and working agreements to reframe conflict from positions to interests.
• Establish structured decision-making to resolve conflicts fairly (timeboxing, criteria-based selection, consent).
• Intervene when conflict becomes harmful to psychological safety or delivery and escalate when needed.
• Coach stakeholders to communicate trade-offs explicitly instead of using hidden agendas or side channels.
• Confirm resolution by documenting agreements, owners, and follow-up checks.
• Prevent recurring conflicts by updating working agreements, roles, or governance expectations.

Product (19%)

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Task 1 — Refine Product Backlog

• Clarify backlog items by improving descriptions, acceptance criteria, and shared understanding with stakeholders.
• Prioritize backlog items using value, risk, dependencies, and capacity constraints.
• Decompose large items into smaller, testable slices that can be delivered within iteration constraints.
• Select estimation techniques (relative sizing, planning poker, T-shirt sizing) appropriate for team context.
• Facilitate collaborative sizing to reduce bias and align expectations on effort and uncertainty.
• Identify when a backlog item needs discovery or a spike before it can be sized or committed.
• Ensure backlog refinement results in an actionable near-term backlog while keeping long-term items appropriately coarse.
• Maintain traceability between backlog ordering and product vision, outcomes, and stakeholder priorities.

Task 2 — Manage Increments

• Ensure planned increments align with business priorities and current strategic objectives.
• Define increment goals that are outcome-oriented and testable, not just lists of tasks.
• Demonstrate increments of value in reviews to obtain early feedback and validate assumptions.
• Select release and iteration strategies that balance learning speed with operational readiness.
• Define and enforce Definition of Done so increments are potentially shippable and quality-controlled.
• Measure delivery of value using outcome metrics and leading indicators rather than activity counts.
• Use feedback on increments to adjust roadmap, backlog ordering, and scope trade-offs.
• Identify when an increment is not delivering value and propose corrective actions (re-slice, pivot, stop).

Task 3 — Visualize Work

• Explain how work visualization improves flow, transparency, and bottleneck detection.
• Choose an appropriate visualization approach (Scrum board, Kanban board, story map) for team context.
• Educate stakeholders and team members on how to interpret visualization artifacts accurately.
• Define policies for updating work state so boards reflect reality, not wishful thinking.
• Establish processes to update data and statistics (WIP, aging, throughput) consistently.
• Use visual signals to surface blockers, dependencies, and risk hotspots early.
• Continuously share information with relevant audiences while avoiding information overload.
• Use visualization insights to drive decisions about WIP limits, sequencing, and capacity allocation.

Task 4 — Manage Value Delivery

• Define what value looks like in a scenario using success criteria, outcomes, and constraints (security, privacy, compliance).
• Ensure value increments are optimized by prioritizing the highest-impact slices and reducing delay.
• Validate that targeted results are achieved using measurable indicators (customer satisfaction, adoption, revenue signals).
• Balance value delivery with sustainability by managing technical debt and quality practices.
• Identify when compliance or regulatory constraints change value trade-offs and adjust prioritization accordingly.
• Use customer feedback and outcome data to re-evaluate product direction and backlog strategy.
• Align value decisions to product vision and organizational goals while managing competing stakeholder demands.
• Communicate value progress transparently, including uncertainty and trade-offs, to enable timely decisions.

Delivery (28%)

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Task 1 — Seek Early Feedback

• Explain how early feedback improves alignment and reduces costly late-stage rework.
• Evaluate customer satisfaction using appropriate methods for the context (surveys, interviews, usage signals).
• Deliver work in small increments that enable rapid validation of assumptions and acceptance criteria.
• Establish a regular feedback cadence with stakeholders and ensure feedback is decision-ready.
• Differentiate between opinion and evidence-based feedback and weigh each appropriately.
• Incorporate feedback by updating backlog, acceptance criteria, and release plans transparently.
• Identify feedback bottlenecks (stakeholder availability, environments) and propose mitigation strategies.
• Communicate how feedback was applied (or why it was not) to maintain trust and shared understanding.

Task 2 — Manage Agile Metrics

• Select metrics that match the decision needs of the audience (team, product, leadership) without driving vanity behavior.
• Differentiate flow metrics (cycle time, WIP, throughput) from output metrics (velocity) and outcome metrics (value).
• Radiate metrics transparently using dashboards and information radiators that highlight trends and exceptions.
• Review and analyze metrics to identify bottlenecks, instability, quality issues, and capacity constraints.
• Use metrics insights to support decisions about scope, sequencing, staffing, and process improvement.
• Detect metric misuse (gaming, false precision) and adjust definitions, context, or measurement approach.
• Explain metrics limitations and variability so stakeholders interpret them correctly.
• Use experiments to test whether a process change improves metrics in a meaningful way.

Task 3 — Manage Impediments and Risk

• Proactively identify risks and impediments using team input, flow data, and stakeholder signals.
• Classify impediments by impact and urgency and choose whether to resolve, mitigate, accept, or escalate.
• Engage the team to select the most appropriate course of action and define clear ownership.
• Prioritize impediment removal and risk mitigation activities to protect near-term flow and long-term outcomes.
• Monitor and control risks and impediments using visible tracking and regular review cadence.
• Apply lessons learned to prevent recurrence through working agreements, tooling, or process changes.
• Recognize systemic impediments (dependencies, policy constraints) and drive cross-team resolution strategies.
• Communicate risk status and decisions to stakeholders in terms of impact, options, and trade-offs.

Task 4 — Recognize and Eliminate Waste

• Visualize the end-to-end flow of value and distinguish value-added work from non-value-added work.
• Identify common waste patterns (handoffs, waiting, rework, overproduction) from metrics and observation.
• Use feedback loops and tools (value stream mapping, cumulative flow) to locate waste sources objectively.
• Prioritize waste reduction activities based on impact to flow, quality, and customer outcomes.
• Design experiments to remove waste while protecting necessary controls (security, compliance).
• Iterate on waste identification and reduction as the system changes and new constraints emerge.
• Validate waste reduction effectiveness using before/after evidence rather than subjective impressions.
• Teach teams and stakeholders to spot waste and propose improvements continuously.

Task 5 — Perform Continuous Improvements

• Use metrics and feedback to identify improvement opportunities with the highest leverage.
• Facilitate improvement planning that results in specific actions, owners, and success criteria.
• Implement improvement actions incrementally to reduce risk and enable learning.
• Evaluate effectiveness of process improvements using outcomes and leading indicators, not just effort spent.
• Ensure improvements are integrated into working agreements and day-to-day behaviors to sustain gains.
• Balance local team improvements with broader system constraints and dependencies.
• Use retrospectives and intraspectives to adapt processes while maintaining delivery commitments responsibly.
• Retire ineffective practices and standardize effective ones across teams when appropriate.

Task 6 — Actively Engage Customers

• Identify and analyze customer needs, constraints, and success criteria for a scenario.
• Establish collaboration mechanisms that keep customers engaged without overwhelming them (reviews, discovery sessions).
• Validate that iteration deliverables meet acceptance criteria through demos, tests, and stakeholder review.
• Handle conflicting customer requests by anchoring decisions to value, risk, and vision alignment.
• Translate customer feedback into actionable backlog changes and communicate impact on timelines and scope.
• Ensure customer collaboration includes clarity on trade-offs, especially for quality and compliance constraints.
• Detect customer disengagement signals and intervene to restore alignment and feedback flow.
• Build trust by following through on commitments and making decisions transparent.

Task 7 — Optimize Flow

• Explain how WIP limits improve throughput predictability and reduce cycle time in knowledge work.
• Set and adjust WIP limits at team and system levels based on flow evidence and capacity constraints.
• Shield the team from interruptions by creating clear interfaces, intake policies, and escalation channels.
• Identify bottlenecks and constraints using flow metrics and visual signals and select corrective actions.
• Use metrics (cycle time, lead time, throughput) to analyze flow stability and forecast delivery realistically.
• Reduce handoffs and queueing by improving cross-functional collaboration and swarming on blocked work.
• Coordinate dependencies across teams to protect flow and integration readiness.
• Continuously refine flow policies based on results, stakeholder needs, and changing constraints.

Tip: When multiple answers look reasonable, choose the one that protects learning and flow: make work visible → shorten feedback → reduce WIP → improve continuously.