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Updated on 22 September 2026. What’s new: retired Disciplined Agile credentials removed, and PMP and PMI-ACP eligibility updated to PMI's current experience rules

Many candidates picture PMI certifications as a ladder: CAPM at the bottom, the PMP in the middle, PgMP at the top. That picture sends people to the wrong exam. PMI's credentials work more like a map grouped by the work you do: one for newcomers, one core practitioner credential, one for agile delivery, several specialist ones, two for senior program and portfolio leaders, and one for AI projects. The right one is the credential that matches work you can already evidence.

That single rule settles most of the confusion behind searches for a PMI certification roadmap. The Project Management Institute does not make you collect its credentials in order, and none of its current exams asks you to hold another PMI credential before you apply. What each one does ask for is a particular kind of experience, and that is why the same person can be ready for the PMI-ACP years before the PgMP, or ready for the PMP while a colleague of the same age is better served by the PMI-RMP.

This guide walks through the map stage by stage. For each group it explains who the credential is written for, what PMI asks before you can apply, and what the exam looks like, with every exam figure taken from the fee and format data we keep for each PMI exam. The final section turns the map into a decision you can make this week.

An 85% pass mark sounds brutal, and the Scrum Guide is short enough to read in an evening, so candidates tend to assume PSM I is either impossible or trivial. Both beliefs cost attempts. The exam has 80 questions in 60 minutes and costs USD 200, and if every question counts equally you can miss about 12. What decides the result is how closely you have read a very short document, not how much Scrum experience you bring.

This guide is about passing PSM I itself: how deep to take the Scrum Guide, how the questions are phrased, how to use Scrum.org's open assessments, and how to run the hour on exam day. It is written for first-time candidates, for practising Scrum Masters who assume experience is enough, and for people retaking after a near miss.

Is the short Scrum Guide really all you need to pass PSM I?

Almost, but only if you read it the way a lawyer reads a contract. The current Guide, the 2020 edition that Scrum.org explains on its Scrum Guide 2020 update page, runs to only a few pages. Every word in it was chosen on purpose, which is why the exam can ask about a single verb. A sentence such as "the Product Owner is one person, not a committee" is a complete exam question waiting to be asked.

Updated on 21 September 2026. What’s new: updated for the LEED v5 Green Associate exam, which replaced the LEED v4 exam in 2026.

Two office blocks on the same street can run up very different energy bills, and most of that gap was settled before anyone switched on a light: which way the building faces, how much glass it has, how well the envelope is sealed, how big the heating and cooling plant is, and whether anyone meters it. The LEED Green Associate exam tests whether you understand those choices. You pass with 170 out of 200 across 100 questions in two hours, now set on LEED v5.

Why does a building's energy bill explain what the LEED Green Associate exam tests?

An energy bill is where the design decisions show up. The meter can't tell a good architect from a careless one, but twelve months of bills can. A deep plan with no daylight needs electric lighting all day, and the lights add heat that the cooling system then has to remove. A west-facing glass wall with no shading lets in the low afternoon sun, and the cooling plant pays for it every summer. Oversized air handlers, sized for a worst case that never arrives, run inefficiently for most of their working life. None of these problems appears on the drawings as a line item. They turn up later as operating cost and as carbon.

Most LEED study advice published this year opens with LEED v5, and for Neighborhood Development candidates it is aimed at the wrong exam. USGBC moved Green Associate, BD+C, O+M and ID+C onto LEED v5 during 2026 and left Neighborhood Development exactly where it was. GBCI's candidate handbook, updated September 2026, still heads its section "LEED AP ND v4 exam specifications". So your exam is unchanged: 100 questions, 120 minutes, 170 out of 200 to pass.

That single fact decides what you should buy, read and practise for the next two months. It also explains why so much recent commentary is unusable: a reference guide written for the v5 credit library will teach you credits that your exam does not test, and a course sold as "updated for LEED v5" may simply not cover the Neighborhood Development rating system at all.

This guide is written for planners, landscape architects, civil engineers, developers and municipal staff preparing for the LEED AP Neighborhood Development specialty. It sets out what USGBC confirms about the exam's version, what the five content areas actually contain, how the combined and specialty-only routes differ, and an eight-week plan you can start this weekend.

Updated on 23 September 2026. What’s new: the exam details now follow the Strategic Portfolio Management blueprint: 60 questions in 90 minutes for USD $450, across nine weighted domains

Dumps and practice questions are not two versions of one product, so there is no fair comparison to make. A dump circulates copied live exam content, and the ServiceNow certification terms you accept before booking treat that content as confidential – a credential earned against them can be withdrawn. This guide works from what ServiceNow publishes about CIS-SPM: 60 questions, 90 minutes, USD $450, and a result given only as Pass or Fail.

What does a CIS-SPM dump actually put at risk?

Start with what you are buying when you buy leaked questions, because the marketing never describes it accurately. Somebody sat the CIS-SPM exam, memorised or captured items, and resold them. Everything that follows – the price, the "verified" label, the promise of a 24-hour pass – rests on that single act. ProcessExam does not link to such material and will not tell you where to find it. What is worth your time is understanding the three separate costs a candidate takes on by going near it.