nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

What are the costs and life span of Atlassian Certifications?

Sorin Sbarnea

I am really glad that Atlassian finally started to perform certifications for administration of their products.

Still, there is something that is not clear to me: which are going to be these certifications and how someone is going to be able to keep them.

Taking the Certified JIRA Administrator exam costs not less than $350 and it does expire in only 18 months, which for a certificate is a very short time. Atlassian doesnt state how a certificate is renewed and currently I am pretty sure they expect you to take the exam again with the full fee.

Also there is the Confluence exam and the upcoming Workflows one. I suspect that we will soon see certification for other products to.

Here is a simple calculation, assuming that you only want to keep the existing 3 certifications. It would costs you $950 for 18 months, meaning about $53/month counting only for taking the exams.

Yesterday I took the Certified Jenkins Engineer and the cost was only $150, with prometric (much better web experience than the Kryterion provider where it was a struggle to even create an account). The CJE certification does not expire and is considerably less expensive any way.

If you ever considered PMI's Project Managemnt Proffesional (PMP) certification expensive to take and keep you finally realise that compares with Atlasian's is not expensive at all. PMP exam is $450-550 and you take it once, after this at ever 3 years you need to proof that you continued to improve your knowledge in the area with different activities (point based system). Still, this method does not require you to take any more exams in order to renew your certification. Even so there are lots of people around arguing that PMP become more of a certification business than else.

Is it my impression or the elite nature of Atlassian certifications is more related to their maintenance costs?

Are any plans for publishing a long term certification path for all Atlassian tools or should we expect to see an ever increasing flow of additional certifications?

Why do we need a workflow certification when we have an Administrator one? Does this imply that the original one was not covering the workflows properly?

On the funny side, I do remember seeing one guy that listed "Certified JIRA Reboot Specialist" on his LinkedIn profile. I am wondering if his certification was covering the reindexing part of if this was another certification.

Comments

Jonas Andersson

LOL at "Certified JIRA Reboot Specialist" smile

I would like to see a more advanced certificate than the ACP, like a AACP where you learn how to do hotfixes on databases still running in production, builds loadbalanced clusters that can be upgraded node by not while still serving content, and clean database dumps of remainders that uninstalling addon's did not purge.

Using/Administering JIRA and Confluence doesn't really demand a certification, but the knowledge of applying the standard unix tool-kits to get around bugs and sort problems out ourselves would be a lot more useful.

Nathan Matsushima

Hi @Sorin Sbarnea -

Great questions! I am pulling in our Certification Leader, @Julia Johnson to answer your questions on a much more detailed level.

Regarding the costs, you are correct that JIRA and Confluence are each $350 and that they last for 18 months. The Advanced Workflows will not be a Certification, but rather a badge that falls under JIRA. The cost for this exam (not released yet) will be much lower than the cost of JIRA. In order to maintain your Certification(s), you will not need to pay the same $350 fee every time. Instead, you will need to do a combination of continued learning, proctored exams online, and gaining badges.

You are certainly right that the certification program will be expanding to include other Atlassian products. More to come on that later!

I will take a stab at a few of the questions:

Are any plans for publishing a long term certification path for all Atlassian tools or should we expect to see an ever increasing flow of additional certifications?

Other certifications are on the roadmap, and will be released as they come out. If you'd like to participate in the future beta programs where the costs may be lower you can submit tickets here. Right now, you can submit a ticket there to be an Advanced Workflows beta tester, however, in order to be eligible you'll need to already have an ACP in JIRA.

Why do we need a workflow certification when we have an Administrator one? Does this imply that the original one was not covering the workflows properly?

This isn't an actual certification, but a badge. Only those who are JIRA ACP are eligible. The original JIRA ACP exam does cover workflows, but not at an extensive level in the way that an exam/badge can that is fully devoted to a specific topic.

I know there's a lot covered here, so I'll allow Julia to chime in and see if you have additional questions from our responses. Thanks for reaching out!

Cheers,

Nathan

Julia_k9zvoc

The cost to earn an Atlassian Certified Professional (ACP) credential is $350, and the credential is valid for 18 months. To maintain your ACP, you will earn Badges. Badges will cost $150 or $75, depending on the type, and Badge exams can be taken from your own location. Each Badge renews your ACP for another 18 months. Our intent is to offer a range of choices, wherever possible, to suit the budget and interests of our Certified population. Some Badges will maintain multiple related ACPs. Maintenance aka 'recertification' is part of Atlassian's commitment to help ACPs continue to learn and stay current with Atlassian's products, so they can keep their teams doing their best work and maximize the career opportunities available to those with real and up-to-date Atlassian expertise.

JIRA Administration and Confluence Administration are only the first Atlassian Certifications; more are on the way. These 2 skillsets are perfectly suited to certification – given the critical performance, scalability and security considerations that these roles are responsible for. Coming within the next year: ACP Certifications for Agile Development with JIRA Software, System Administration for Atlassian, and JIRA Service Desk Administration. Also a Badge for Advanced Workflows, a deeper treatment of complex workflow customization.

Jozef Vandenmooter

Is it still possible to sign up for beta exams? The link in above post does not work anymore. I already have ACP-100 and ACP-600.

Thanks,

Jozef

Inayat Nahvi

FYI, I passed my ACP-100 and ACP-600 exams last year. The costs were $350 and $100 in late 2019. However, it looks like since the beginning of 2020, Atlassian has reduced the cost to $250 for the ACP-100/200/300/400/500 exams.

Julia_k9zvoc

Also, all Certifications, Pro Skills Badges and Skills Badges are valid for 24 months now, not 18! Anyone can earn Skills Badges and Pro Skills Badges --- you don't need to be Certified first.

More information at https://www.atlassian.com/university/certification

Chekliza58

Yes

Welcome!

It looks like you're new here. Sign in or register to get started.

Quick Links

Find more posts tagged with

training-and-certification

certification