Kotter, ADKAR and the ACMP Standard: which model the CCMP exam tests

What does each of the three models describe?

Kotter’s model describes the leadership story of a change in eight steps, ADKAR describes five stages an individual passes through, and the ACMP Standard describes a project process in five groups.

Kotter’s eight steps, published on the Kotter methodology page, run from creating urgency to making the change stick in the culture. They answer the question a senior leader asks first: how do I get people to want this? ADKAR, from Prosci (the ADKAR page on prosci.com), stands for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. It is a diagnosis tool: you ask where a given person is stuck.

• Create a sense of urgency, then build a guiding coalition.
• Form a strategic vision and enlist a volunteer army.
• Enable action by removing barriers and generate short-term wins.
• Sustain acceleration and institute change in the culture.

Eight steps in four pairs is how we remember them. The list shows why the model reads well in a leadership meeting: every step is something a senior person can do or say. It says little about how to measure readiness or to plan training, which is where the Standard takes over.

The ACMP Standard for Change Management is different in kind. It is organised in five process groups: evaluate change impact and organisational readiness, formulate the change management strategy, develop the change management plan, execute the plan, and close the change management effort. You can read it on the ACMP Standard page. Lewin’s unfreeze, change, refreeze and the Bridges transition model sit in the same family as Kotter and ADKAR: they are models, not credentials.

Which one does the CCMP exam test?

The CCMP exam is built on the ACMP Standard, taken over 150 multiple-choice questions in three hours, with online proctoring by Kryterion.

Knowing Kotter and ADKAR helps you read a scenario question, but the vocabulary of the exam is the Standard’s. The ACMP does not publish the pass mark, so a candidate cannot calibrate by score; the sensible approach is to study the five process groups until you can place any activity in one of them. The ACMP details the eligibility on its CCMP eligibility page: a degree plus 4,200 hours of experience, or secondary education plus 7,000 hours, and 21 hours of aligned training taken in the past seven years.

That training is where a QEP course comes in. This site follows Leanova Academy, an official ACMP QEP, and its 21-hour course is the self-paced CCMP prep course: 45 modules, QEP code Q000607, US$595 on 7 October 2026, with a 14-day money-back guarantee. It trains you on the Standard, not on Kotter or ADKAR.

The three models on one project: how they fit together

They fit by layers: the Standard sets the sequence of work, Kotter shapes how leaders talk about it, and ADKAR tells you where individuals stall.

Take a fictional case, invented for this article. Northgate Clinics, a group of six outpatient centres, replaces its appointment system. Dana, the change lead, begins with the first Standard group: she assesses how much each centre’s routine will change and how ready each team is. A reception team that handles 200 calls a day is affected more than a billing team that only sees a new screen.

For the strategy and plan, she borrows Kotter. The medical director names the urgency (patients wait on hold too long), a coalition of one nurse and one receptionist per centre forms, and short-term wins are scheduled for the first month. When go-live arrives, ADKAR becomes her checklist. In the second centre, staff know about the system and want it, but they cannot yet use it, so she adds practice sessions. That is an ability gap, a precise finding that the Standard alone would not have named.

Credentials linked to each model

Prosci links to ADKAR, Kotter links to Kotter Change Certified, and the CCMP links to the Standard, as the table shows with figures read on 7 October 2026.

Model	Focus	Related credential	Price read on 7 October 2026
Kotter’s 8 steps	Leadership narrative	Kotter Change Certified, after 6 courses (about 30 to 35 hours, 12 months to complete)	US$6,000 five-day in-person programme; online Foundations of Change US$1,100; Leading Change in the Era of AI US$595
ADKAR	Individual change	Prosci Certified Change Practitioner, three-day intensive	US$4,500 online, US$4,850 in person
ACMP Standard	Process of the change effort	CCMP, awarded by the ACMP after an exam	US$595 member or US$795 non-member application, plus the 21-hour course

The full online price of the Kotter programme was not published, so we leave it out. Each of these costs more or less depending on how many hours of training you need and which provider you choose. For a first credential with three years of experience, the CCMP is the one we would pick, because it relies on a published standard and on experience you can document. Someone whose employer already runs ADKAR will find the Prosci programme closer to daily work.

Where to go from here

Start with the Standard, since it is the reference of the one exam among the three, and add the other two as reading rather than as additional purchases.

If you want to place the models inside a broader view of leadership education, our overview of change leadership education covers the courses that teach Kotter-style leadership. To learn who wrote this site, read about the founder and his promise to learners.

A last remark on reading order. Candidates often start with the model their employer uses, and that is reasonable. The risk is to answer exam scenarios with that model’s vocabulary, so after each practice question we suggest naming the process group it belongs to. That habit takes a few weeks to build, and it is cheap compared with a retake at US$300 for members or US$375 for non-members (7 October 2026).

Next step: read the five process groups on the ACMP page, then try to place the last project you ran in them. The gaps you find are your study plan.

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