Change management glossary: from ACMP to the 21-hour rule, one sentence each

Terms from 21 to E: requirement, credentials and core concepts

The first group covers the ACMP vocabulary and the words people confuse most often. Facts below were read on the ACMP website on 7 October 2026.

21-hour requirement. It is the training condition of the CCMP: 21 hours of change management training aligned with the Standard for Change Management©, taught with an instructor present and completed in the past 7 years. The renewal rules for the CCMP use a different measure, units rather than course hours.

ACMP. The Association of Change Management Professionals, the professional body that publishes the Standard for Change Management©, awards the CCMP and the MCMP and runs the QEP programme (acmpglobal.org).

ADKAR. A model from Prosci (ADKAR page) that describes individual change in five steps: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. It is a model, and it is not a certification.

CCMP. The Certified Change Management Professional credential, awarded by the ACMP after an exam of 150 multiple-choice questions over three hours, and valid for three years.

Certificate. A document that proves you completed a course, such as the certificate of completion a QEP course issues.

Certification. A credential awarded by a body after an assessment, such as the CCMP or the MCMP.

Change impact assessment. The analysis of who is affected by a change, how deeply, and what must be different in their daily work. It sits in the first process group of the Standard.

Change leadership. The set of visible actions by senior people that signal why the change matters and what is expected of others.

Change practitioner. A person who plans and carries out change management activities on an initiative, whatever the job title.

Change saturation. The point at which people face more simultaneous changes than they can absorb, which slows adoption of each one.

CMBoK. The Change Management Body of Knowledge, the syllabus developed with the Change Management Institute on which the APMG exams are built. The CCMP exam refers to the ACMP Standard instead.

CMI. The Change Management Institute, a professional body for the discipline (change-management-institute.com), separate from the ACMP.

Corporate training. Courses bought for a team or an organisation, often with volume pricing and private cohorts.

Terms from F to M: Kotter, LCeX and the MCMP

These terms concern frameworks, delivery formats and the senior credential. The MCMP page of the ACMP was read on 7 October 2026.

Kotter. John Kotter’s 8-step model of organisational change, described on the Kotter 8 steps page, a framework and not a credential from the ACMP.

LCeX. The AI change management pathway of Leanova Academy, a series of courses (Essentials, Specialist, Master and Professional) that end in certificates of completion, with a digital badge on the Professional course. The LCeX pathway is a Leanova product, and the CCMP stays an ACMP credential.

Live online. A course taught by an instructor in real time over a video platform, on fixed dates.

MCMP. The Master Change Management Professional credential of the ACMP, which requires an active CCMP, 8,400 hours of experience, 10 hours of training different from the CCMP training and at least 6 hours of mentorship, all within the 10 years before applying.

Mentorship hours. Hours spent as a mentor on Standard-aligned engagements, which the MCMP requires (6 at least) and which also count in its renewal (6 of the 15 PDUs).

Terms from N to S: PDU, QEP, readiness and the Standard

This group holds the terms you meet when you renew a credential or choose a course. Figures were read on acmpglobal.org on 7 October 2026.

OCM. Organizational change management, the discipline of preparing, supporting and equipping people to adopt a change.

PDU. A professional development unit, the ACMP’s measure of learning and work activity for renewal: the CCMP needs 60 PDUs every three years.

Prosci. A methodology and training company, known for ADKAR, and not a credential-awarding body.

QEP. The ACMP Qualified Education Provider™ programme, which evaluates courses against documented objectives, adult learning methods, qualified instructors and accurate advertising. The article on what the ACMP QEP label means goes further.

Readiness. How prepared an organisation or a group is to receive a change, assessed before the plan is written.

Resistance. The reactions of people who doubt, oppose or postpone a change, which a practitioner treats as information about the plan.

Self-paced. A course the learner follows alone and on their own schedule, with recorded content. Leanova’s CCMP self-paced course is 21 QEP hours with one year of access.

Sponsor. The senior person who owns the business case for a change and uses their authority to support it.

Standard for Change Management. The ACMP reference for the profession, organised in five process groups: evaluate change impact and readiness, formulate the strategy, develop the plan, execute it and complete the effort. See the explanation of the ACMP Standard.

Stakeholder analysis. The identification of the people and groups concerned by a change, with their influence, interest and likely position.

Sustainment. The work done after go-live to keep the new way of working in place, including reinforcement, measurement and corrections.

Terms from T to Z: transition and where it fits

The last group has one entry, and it describes what people live through while the project goes live. It comes from practice rather than from an ACMP requirement.

Transition (Bridges). In William Bridges’ model, the inner process through which people let go of the old situation and adopt the new one, distinct from the change as an external event. Lewin’s unfreeze, change and refreeze offers an older and simpler picture of the same period. A practitioner who plans only the external change, such as new tools and new dates, leaves the inner transition to chance, and that gap is where adoption often stalls.

For the broader discipline behind these words, read the guide to organizational change management.

What is the difference between a certificate and a certification?

A certificate proves you finished a course, while a certification is a credential a body awards after assessing you. The CCMP and the MCMP are certifications from the ACMP, and a QEP course gives a certificate plus the training hours.

The distinction matters in practice. A Leanova Academy course, which is an official ACMP® QEP™ course, ends with a certificate of completion and, for the LCeX-Professional course, an LCeX-P digital badge. Leanova is a training provider and not the ACMP, and it never awards the CCMP or the MCMP. Mixing the two words leads buyers to expect a credential from a course, which only an exam and an application can produce.

The 17 terms the ACMP Standard defines (2025 edition)

Section 3 of the ACMP Standard for Change Management, second edition (2025), defines 17 terms, plus 5 sub-terms nested under them. This edition is the basis of the CCMP exam since 1 April 2026, so these words are the ones the exam expects you to use precisely. The table gives each official term in English, a one-sentence definition in our own words, and the concept (4.x) or process (5.x) where the Standard puts it to work.

Term	Our definition	Where it shows up
Adoption	The point where people truly take up a new way of working and their daily behavior matches what the change intends.	4.1, 4.5
Benefit Benefit Realization	A gain that comes out of a change, whether it can be counted or only observed; Benefit Realization is the moment the expected gains are actually reached.	4.1, 5.2.7
Change Current State, Future State	The move from one situation to another; the Current State is the starting point and the Future State is the situation once the gains are in place.	4.1, 4.3, 5.1.1
Change Impact	The way a change touches people, processes, technology, data and the physical workplace on the road to the future state.	5.1.8
Change Management	A structured way of guiding an organization from where it is to where it wants to be so the intended gains materialize.	4.1, 4.4
Change Risk	Any event or condition that could weaken the gains expected from a change if it happened.	5.1.16
Change Saturation	The situation where an organization is asked to absorb more change at once than the affected people can reasonably handle.	5.1.12, 5.1.13
Competency	The knowledge, skills and abilities that a person or an organization can draw on.	4.6, 5.2.6
Engagement	How involved stakeholders are in the change and how much they can influence it.	5.2.4
Governance	The decision-making arrangements through which authorized people approve, track and adjust the activities of the change management plan.	5.1.4
Outcome	A precise result or effect that can be measured.	5.1.5
Readiness	How prepared an organization, or part of it, is to welcome, handle and absorb an incoming change.	4.8, 5.1.13, 5.2.5
Resistance Resistance Management	A stakeholder pushing back against a change; Resistance Management is the work of dealing with that pushback.	5.1.8, 5.1.16
Sponsor Sponsorship	The person or group answerable for the gains of a change; Sponsorship is the work of rallying stakeholders so they back and own the change.	5.1.6, 5.2.3
Stakeholder	Any person who is affected by the change.	5.1.7
Sustainability	The capacity of the organization to keep the future state in place over time.	5.2.8
Vision	The picture of what the future state looks like.	5.1.3

For the full structure of the Standard, read the ACMP Standard for Change Management explained; for the 33 processes and their outputs, see the ACMP Standard processes and deliverables.

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