AMA on Monday, April 6th on all things Atlassian Training and Certification

[Bridget]

Hello Community members!

On Monday, April 6th, from 2-3 PM PST, Joanna Thurman + Julia Johnson from the Atlassian Traning and Certification Team will be LIVE on Community to answer your questions.

In case you missed it, you can watch their Remote Summit 2020 session recording here: Certification: you can do it. Here's how

Feel free to submit your questions before the AMA goes live - Joanna and Julia will be sure to address them when the time comes. 

We look forward to reading your questions - don't hold back! 

[Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_]

Are they developing a certification for OpsGenie?

[Julia]

Hi @Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_ , we'll be looking at that possibility during the last half of 2020. 

[LarryBrock]

@Bridget - will the AMA be happening on this thread or on another?

[Bridget]

This thread! :) 

[Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_]

I am advocating certifications to our user groups.  Would you guys be open to doing a virtual session with us for best practices, tips, to get to certifications?

[Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_]

Because I LOVE having Atlassians participate!

[Julia]

@Ed Gaile _Atlanta_ GA_ , yes, we'd love to do that!  Also, we have a great Atlassian University Live webinar upcoming later this month. 

“Certification: You can do it! Here’s how.”

Join Joanna Thurmann, Principal Certification Developer, for our next Atlassian University Live Webinar on April 21, entitled “Certification: You can do it! Here’s how.” Learn the best way to go from zero to certified, including the opportunity for in-person Q&A.

Register here: https://atlassian.zoom.us/webinar/register/4615855939678/WN_1imJb4B_RL-lLDC3I7TImg

[Fabienne Gerhard]

Great thanks for that - I was always thinking about getting certified 👏🏻 Looks like this gonna gets one step closer

Love the title!

[Fadoua]

Good Day,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to share some of our questions.

• Why doesn't ACP-600 count toward the certs to become a Master?
• What about the other Atlassian Tools are you planning one having certs for those as well (BitBucket, Bamboo, ....) ?

Thank you!

[Julia]

Hi @Fadoua , the 5 Atlassian Certified Professional-level credentials that count toward Atlassian Certified Master are higher-level credentials designed for those with 1-3 years of experience.

AC-JPA (Project Administration in Jira Server Certification) is an introductory-level Certification designed to be attainable for someone new to Jira.  It provides a great foundation for the Jira Administration certification, but it's limited in scope. It is a subset of the Jira Administration skillset.

We do not have plans for Certification on Bitbucket, Bamboo, etc.  We may eventually offer Skills Badges or Pro Skills Badges on the developer tools.

[Fun Man Andy]

COURSES FOR CLOUD
Not every course is available for cloud... what was the reasoning behind that again!?

[Dan]

Great question - clearly our business for many years was focused on our Server and Data Center products. As the company has made a shift towards to the Cloud product wise, Atlassian University is as well. So.... we are playing catch up! Currently our App is available for the Cloud, as well as Jira Essentials, Jira Essentials with Agile Mindset, Jira Admin 1 and Jira & Confluence Together. Jira Admin 2 is on deck for the next Cloud release!

Thank you for your patience as we do our best to get out really strong Cloud equivalents for these  training courses. 

Dan

[Fun Man Andy]

NEXT-GEN
This is a product that is part misunderstood and part irritatingly flawed... but knowing what is what and how to use it in an efficient and optimised manner is the key difference between:
"Yeah, we know what we're doing, epic!" and "Pfff... what a load of junk, why even bother!"

Will there ever be a course specific to Next-Gen?

[Dan]

Andy,

Jira Admin 1 for Cloud (and soon our Jira Admin 2 Cloud release) has training on Next-Gen projects included. I don't believe there are plans to have a Next-Gen exclusive training at this time, it'll be incorporated though into our Cloud offerings as they get released.

Dan

[Sherry Quinn]

Andy, there are some free tutorials on Next-Gen here too: https://training.atlassian.com/next-gen-projects. 

Feel free to share the link with your teammates. 

[Fun Man Andy]

TRELLO
I am slowly becoming an uber nerd... and thus want the certificate to prove it.
When will this get into the Atlassian University!?

[Dan]

Andy, there is no plan at this time to offer a Certification for Trello, if I understood your question correctly.

Dan

[Matthew Stublefield]

Based on the answer to my last question, and reviewing the exam topic PDFs, certs are still focused on Server (and when we wrote them, they predated significant divergence between Server and DC).

A lot of features have been added in the last two years that are DC-only, and I get the impression that there have been advances made in DC configuration and management.

And as of a couple of weeks ago, we now have single-node data center licenses that activate these features on an existing Jira Server box to help ease transition and provide access to these newer, powerful features.

Is addressing DC on the cert roadmap? Will there be updates to the existing certs or new certs to address DC?

And to extend on that question: any plan for Cloud certs? At this point, the Cloud code base is more different from Server/DC than alike. With Premier, there are large enterprises now looking to Cloud as a solution for them.

I imagine that Server is still the majority of installs/licenses, but it seems to be getting less investment from Atlassian than DC or Cloud, and with last year's changes to Server and DC pricing, more and more customers will be switching to DC. Will the certs be updated to address the differences in the applications?

[Julia]

Thank you for your questions.

Certifications for Jira Cloud are coming soon -- they will be released within a few months.   In our next planning cycle, we'll be looking at how to best address Data Center.  

[Matthew Stublefield]

Our head of internal L&D was asking me just this morning about study materials for the certifications.

What versions of the software do the certifications currently match? The Jira Admin exam topics PDF states that ACP-100 has been validated for Jira Server Enterprise Releases. Does that mean that the exam has been updated since October 2019? Have study materials been updated/changed since then?

The Jira Software exam topics PDF states that it's for Jira Software 7. But Jira Software v7 was released in October 2015, and the last release was in February 2020. There were two Jira Software Enterprise Releases. Which version should we be targeting for studying?

Service Desk is even trickier. The exam topics PDF states that it is on v3 (which, for the other exam topics PDFs, suggests that this is the third version of the PDF). But then, it says it's validated for JSD Enterprise Releases, and in the description states "This is Version 3." JSD has three enterprise releases listed at https://confluence.atlassian.com/enterprise/atlassian-enterprise-releases-948227420.html : 3.9, 3.16, and 4.5. So should we be studying using 4.5 because it's the most recent JSD Enterprise Release, or should we be using 3.9 or 3.16?  And if v3, which one? 3.9 was in Nov 2017 and 3.16 in Nov 2018.

And for all of those, have the study materials/videos been updated, or just the exam topics PDF? The cert prep courses don't list a version or updated date on their pages.

I've been out of the loop on certs for a while, so I told him I'd ask you all this afternoon :-)

[Julia]

Matthew, thank you for your question, we will revise the Exam Topics documents to make the version information more clear.

Atlassian’s philosophy is to make the exams as version-agnostic as possible, and focus on the knowledge and skills that are common across the Enterprise Releases.

This means that for ACP-100 Jira Administration, you can prepare using Jira 7.13 or Jira 8.5.

For ACP-400 Jira Service Desk Administration, this means you can use 3.16 or 4.5 to prepare.

For ACP-300, Agile Development with Jira Software, you can prepare using Jira 7.13 or Jira 8.5.