PMI has published the Agile Practice Guide – Second Edition. The first edition, written with the Agile Alliance in 2017, has been the framework-neutral agile reference behind the PMI-ACP exam and the agile sections of the PMBOK® Guide ever since. Nine years later the terminology has moved, and for a glossary site that is the part worth writing down first: three familiar terms are officially retired, and PMI’s own vocabulary already reflects it.
What PMI has published, and what it has not said
Two PMI sources exist as of 8 September 2026. The first is a blog post from 2 September 2026 by Mike Griffiths, who chaired the team behind the first edition and advised on the eighth edition of the PMBOK® Guide. The second is the product page on pmi.org, which lists the second edition at 182 pages with a publication date of July 2026, and says PMI members get a digital copy at no additional cost.
The honest limit of this article: we have not read the second edition itself. Everything below about its content is PMI’s own description, taken from those two pages. Where PMI gives a number, it is PMI’s number. Where the guide’s wording matters, we checked it against the one PMI document we do have in full, the PMBOK® Guide – Eighth Edition.
Three terms are gone. The PMBOK Guide dropped them first.
PMI names three terminology changes explicitly:
- Backlog grooming is now backlog refinement.
- Daily standup is now daily coordination meeting.
- The binary label hybrid gives way to a delivery continuum: instead of sorting an approach into predictive, agile or hybrid, teams pick the mix of predictive and agile practices that fits the situation.
None of this is new to the PMBOK® Guide – Eighth Edition. Its text uses “backlog refinement” throughout and never uses “grooming”. It uses “daily coordination meetings” and does not contain the word “stand-up” or “standup” at all. So the second edition of the practice guide is not inventing vocabulary; it is catching the agile reference up with the standard that was revised before it. If you are preparing for the PMP or the PMI-ACP, the safe habit is to use the new terms and recognise the old ones.
On this site the affected entries are sprint, which now names the daily coordination meeting and notes the old term, backlog, which already uses “refinement”, and hybrid approach, which already frames hybrid as a blend chosen by tailoring rather than a third category, and will get the “delivery continuum” wording once we have checked it against the published guide, not against a blog post about it.
What else changed, in PMI’s own grouping
PMI sorts the revisions into three groups. Summarised, with the caveat above that this is PMI’s account:
Practice changes. Product management thinking is described as the largest single expansion. Teams increasingly own a product continuously instead of delivering a project and disbanding, and the guide brings in adjacent disciplines that agile teams use alongside delivery: design thinking, Lean Startup with its minimum viable products and build-measure-learn loops, go-to-market questions and product life cycle phases. PMI is careful to call these complementary disciplines, not agile methods. Every chapter now ends with a section on generative AI, covering where it can help and where it can do harm.
Social changes. Psychological safety is treated as a baseline requirement for team performance rather than a nice-to-have. Sustainability is widened from the original “sustainable pace” to decisions about people, planet and long-term prosperity. The language is more inclusive throughout.
Strategic changes. The guide now acknowledges scaling frameworks (PMI names SAFe, LeSS, Scrum@Scale and Disciplined Agile) and explains when to think about them, without becoming a scaling handbook. It introduces enterprise agility as the organisational context around teams and points to PMI’s Manifesto for Enterprise Agility and to the M.O.R.E. principles of the PMBOK® Guide – Eighth Edition. The measurement guidance is expanded from output counts towards flow metrics, outcomes and OKRs. The product page adds DevOps and DORA metrics to that list.
The numbers PMI attaches to it
The blog post cites unnamed “recent PMI research” for four figures: 81 % of project professionals say their projects are becoming more complex, 61 % report losing value to that complexity, 85 % of C-suite executives call enterprise agility critical, and 65 % have implemented it only to a limited extent or not at all. PMI does not link the underlying study in the post, so we cannot tell you the sample, the year or the question wording. Treat them as PMI’s framing of why a second edition was needed, not as independent evidence.
What stays the same
Framework neutrality. PMI repeats the design decision from 2017: iterations are not always called sprints, facilitators are not all called scrum masters, and no framework is endorsed over another. The guide still starts with the individual and the team, explains why agile suits high-uncertainty work, and covers life cycle selection, chartering, refinement sessions, retrospectives and delivering value in small increments. For the vocabulary behind that, see agile, iteration, adaptive life cycle and Kanban board.
What to do with this
- If you write documentation, templates or training material, replace “grooming” and “standup” now. The PMBOK® Guide already has, and exam questions follow the standard.
- If you label your approach “hybrid”, expect the question “which mix, and why” rather than a checkbox. That is what the delivery continuum idea is for.
- If you are a PMI member, the digital copy is included. If you are not, the product page is the place to check the price, which we have not verified and do not quote.
We will revise the affected glossary pages against the guide itself once we have read it, and note on each page what changed. For how PMI’s core standard has moved across editions, see PMBOK editions compared; for PMI’s other 2026 publication with a terminology footprint, see PMI’s AI standard.
Sources
- Mike Griffiths, What’s New in the Agile Practice Guide – Second Edition, PMI Blog, 2 September 2026.
- PMI, Agile Practice Guide (product page): 182 pages, publication date July 2026, read 8 September 2026.
- PMI, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) – Eighth Edition, checked for the terms “backlog refinement”, “daily coordination meeting”, “grooming” and “stand-up”.
By Tom, PMP-certified since 2004. Last updated: September 2026