Passed the ACA-900 certification, Jira Essentials certification

[Kenneth Jones]

I took my test this morning, it was 28 questions in length.  I passed. I had no experience with Jira 4 days ago but I do have IT and Program Management experience. 

Resources: 
Most useful: Atlassian University.  I don't think the navigation is the easiest to use, but you can google around or just go to this link:
https://community.atlassian.com/learning/collection/certification-prep/jira-software-essentials-prep
The three courses it has you take will give you a solid baseline for the information on the exam. 

Somewhat useful: Udemy/Youtube/LinkedIN - There have been lots of changes in the Jira as far as the Navigation Bar, Issues now being called Projects.  I don't think they are that hard to follow but you will notice the veterans of the program still referring to the old naming conventions.  Which brings me to the reason I say "somewhat useful", you need to verify that they are teaching is the latest Jira Cloud style to make sure you don't confuse yourself. 

Recommended plan:
1.) Review the Exam Objectives and make sure you are comfortable with them. 

• Basic concepts — 21%
• Jira navigation — 15%
• Rovo basics — 3%
• Issue lifecycle, workflow, and boards — 24%
• Working with work items — 37%
  
  

2.) Go through the courses listed on the Atlassian page I linked above
3.) Download free Jira and just realize you won't have access to Rovo, so pay attention and take notes while watching the videos.  After downloading Jira, play around with it and create a few projects.  Even if you don't really know what you are doing, it still helps. 
4.) If you still aren't comfortable, watch a few videos but verify they aren't teaching you old stuff. 

Best of luck!

[Sara_Schneider]

Congrats and thanks for sharing!! 

[Ree Kent]

Congratulations @Kenneth Jones !

[Miriam Hopton]

Congrats on passing and this is so helpful!!

[Viacheslav Fedunov]

Congrats

[Albert Manuel]

Keep it going! Whats the next cert you gonna take?

[Kenneth Jones]

Not quite sure to be honest. Finally got to the second round of an interview process.  If selected, I'll be on the network admin side of the house, i just wanted to learn a bit about Jira because its what all the developers are going to be using. But if I don't get the job, it'll give me more time to continue learning, so this is the order of certs I have written down. 

ACA-900 (Essentials)  --Completed
ACP-620 (Manage Projects)
ACP-420 (JSM Manager)
ACP-520 (Org Admin)
ACP-120 (Jira Admin)

I'm excited to actually see it all in action, only so much you can learn from videos and books.