#AlwaysBeLearning Lesson 1 | Kickstart Your Certification Success—for 🆓!

[#1]

G’day, Training and Certification community! As promised in our announcement last week, It’s time for Lesson One in our #AlwaysBeLearning series. Got your pencils sharpened? Wearing your finest back-to-school duds? 

Great. Let’s dive in.

Are you certified on the Atlassian products you use each day? If not, is time to get certified?

First, take a look at our spiffy new video to find out whether Atlassian Certification might be right for you:

Atlassian University offers Certifications and credentials in Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, and more. And no matter how you do it, preparing for an Atlassian Certification also helps you become a stronger contributor to your team.

Atlassian University is also here to help you get certified! We’ve got tons of free resources you can lean on along your path to certification, today we're excited to share three key ones you can get started with right away.

Resource #1: How to Get Certified with Atlassian: A Step-by-Step Guide

This page on Atlassian University is a great place to start if you’re brand new to the process of certification. Although each Atlassian certification is unique, the steps required to earn them are essentially the same. You can follow the directions on the page to start your certification journey—and also refer to the Frequently Asked Questions about Atlassian Certification, as well as the “Convince Your Boss” letter at the bottom of the page—not to be missed if you’re in need of some support to pitch your business case!

Resource #2: Atlassian Certification Webinars: Success Panels & Insider Tips

Atlassian University hosts a regular webinar series (click here to subscribe and receive notice of upcoming webinars) on a range of topics intended to help you become wildly successful with Atlassian products, but one of our favorite topics for a webinar is Certification! In the Atlassian University webinar library, we currently have three webinars on certification:

• Atlassian Certification: 5 Insider Tips (just hosted last month!) — This recent webinar includes five insider tips for certification success, as well as plenty of Q&A sourced directly from the audience who attended the webinar live. The five concrete tips focus on the highly-coveted ACP-100 credential, but if you’re considering the ACP-120 Cloud certification instead, we suggest watching the webinar anyway, as there’s a sizable overlap between the Data Center and Cloud exams, and you’ll hear directly from the experts who wrote the exam.

• This is Your Year to Earn an Atlassian Certification — This webinar originally recorded in 2021 goes more in-depth into everything you need to know to be able to earn an Atlassian certification—again, straight from the experts who build the exams.

• Certification Success Panel — In this webinar, you'll learn from professionals who have studied for—and passed—an Atlassian Certification. Hear from @Joanna Thurmann @Jimmy Seddon and @Hana Kučerová about how they did it and what it’s done for their career.

Resource #3: ACP-100 Jira Administration for Data Center Exam Success Course

This course—newly redesigned and made available free for the first time—is designed to set you up for success in earning your Jira Administrator Certification from Atlassian University. (Studying for a Cloud exam? Never fear: the ACP-120 Certification Success Course is coming up soon in our roadmap.)

You can use the exam success course as a study companion. We recommend at least 6 - 8 weeks of study, but the course will be available to you for as long as you need to get ready for your exam. Enroll (🆓!) today to learn what to expect from the Jira Administrator certification exam, get in-depth guidance on how to focus your preparation (plus hands-on resources like Trello templates, practice questions, and sandbox challenges), and hear technical discussion of the exam topics straight from Atlassian experts who wrote the exam.

How do you know if you’re ready for succeeding at the ACP-100 exam? Check if this list sounds familiar:

Not sure if the course is right for you? Check if this list sounds familiar:

• You have 1-2 years of experience administering Jira

• You can interpret and translate business requirements to Jira

• You can keep Jira healthy because you grasp how your choices affect Jira's performance, scalability, and day-to-day manageability

• You’re a guru when it comes to workflows, schemes, and other features available through Jira

• You know how to take advantage of Atlassian resources and community to help your team implement best practices within Jira

That’s it for today’s lesson, folks!

---

Let us know in the comments below:

• Are you Atlassian Certified? If so, which certifications do you have? 👀

• If not, which resource would you start with to get there?

[G subramanyam]

Hi @Jaime Netzer I prefer and looking forward to ACP-120 Certification Success Course/ path to start with. And so much inclined towards Confluence admin if it's in pipeline.

[Andy Gladstone]

Regretfully, I am not YET Atlassian certified. I have attaining (1) Atlassian certification on my New Year's Resolution list, but have not yet completed this task. It looks like it will be the ACP-120 that I will target in Q4. Now I need to work on my Trello Board for a solid study plan.

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

This "semester" just started and I already had a quiz! It was ASB-116 and I passed it. Rock on...

My certifications and badges are:

Atlassian Certified Jira Administrator for Data Center and Server (ACP-JA)
Atlassian Certified Jira Project Administrator for Data Center and Server (ACP-JPA)

Atlassian Skills Badge: Email in Jira (ASB-EMJ)
Atlassian Skills Badge: Customizing Jira Workflows (ASB-CJW)
Atlassian Skills Badge: Housekeeping and Governance in Jira (ASB-HGJ)
Atlassian Skills Badge: Issue Security In Jira (ASB-ISJ)

[Kristján Geir Mathiesen]

Hey @Andy Gladstone share that Trello board if you end up making it! I am also going to go for ACP-120 in Q4.

[Jaime Netzer]

Here's a template you can use @Kristján Geir Mathiesen !

[Valerie Knapp]

Hi @Jaime Netzer . Thanks for this article. I think it would be more accurate to say that you can get qualified or training in lots of Atlassian products but I only see that you can get certfied in Jira at the moment, Atlassian certification overview : Atlassian.

[thob]

Thanks for sharing the information @Jaime Netzer 

[Sakina]

Thanks for the tips @Jaime Netzer 

[Sakina]

Looking forward to ACP-100

[Jimmy Seddon]

Great post!  Thank you @Jaime Netzer!

[Jaime Netzer]

Thanks, @Valerie Knapp — we also have a JSM certification, but you're right about the other products! I will tweak the language accordingly.

[Robert Wen_Cprime_]

Hello, Atlassian Certified Expert (ACE) here!  Which means I have gone through several Atlassian certifications.

Of course to keep this honor, I have to keep my certifications current.  Which means getting badges (this year for 2 exams) and (eventually) taking new exams to take the place of certifications that will retire in 2024.

[Joanna Thurmann]

Just jumping in to say that we also have professional skills badges for two of our other products: Jira Align and Confluence. And the latter one counts towards the attainment of the highly prized Atlassian Certified Expert designation :-) You can do it, @Valerie Knapp

[Tosha Liveoak]

Thank you, @Jaime Netzer ! I have my ACP-620 exam scheduled for next month and have a few badges! #AlwaysBeLearning

[Nayeemuddin Khan]

Thank you so much for sharing.

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

@Jaime Netzer thanx for sharing this!

I'm not yet Atlassian Certified and I currently hold two certifications. Hopefully by the end of the year I'm planning to get the third one!

[Sam Nadarajan]

I'm Atlassian Certified as of Nov 2021 with the following certs: ACP-100, ACP-120, ACP-420, and ACP-620. It was long and hard work, but I keep telling people at my company that the certs were worth it - the exams definitely make you think and I learned quite a bit!

[Ollie Guan]

🆓

[Daniel Ebers]

Yes, certified - from my point of view it was worth spending the time and efforts.
Probably other products like Opsgenie could be taken into account to new learning material and certification stuff - I hear every now and then this could be beneficial.

[Max Foerster - K15t]

Easy answer, all of them (even the discontinued certifications) except for ACP-500. 😄 🤘🏼 Back when I started, I was deep diving into the documentation and mainly the tool itself. But now, with the content library and all the courses, you have even more helpful material available. 

[Brant Schroeder]

@Jaime Netzer Looking to get started on my cloud certifications.  Looking forward to the ACP-120 Certification Success Course.

[Connor]

Based on that checklist it seems like I should consider starting my journey to get certified.

[Summer Hogan]

I do not have any Atlassian certifications, but based on this information it sounds like I should start this journey! 

[Fabian Lim]

I have ACP-120 scheduled for October and will schedule ACP-100 by Q4.  

Thanks for sharing @Jaime Netzer 

[Mike Clarke]

I tried and failed the ACP600 exam a couple of times when I was still new to Jira and expected that I could pass just by studying the certification prep course and a few YouTube videos - man was I wrong!

The exams don't necessarily test your knowledge (e.g. what is a Permission Scheme and how do you modify it) but much more focused on scenario-based problem-solving questions, so nothing beats hands on experience.

My employer required me to get ACP certified so I went for the pragmatic approach and attempted the ACP610 and ACP620 exams as I figured they share a lot of content.

Glad to say that I passed the exams - I'm not sure if the new 610/620 exams are easier than the 600 exams were or if I've learned more and gained confidence between sitting the exams, but the questions seemed to make more sense this time.

I feel much more confident in the toolchain and am enjoying learning something new every day.

I've done a lot of work with JSM and really enjoy the tool, so I've got my sights set on ACP-420, and would be very keen to take on ACP-120 and the Confluence Badge to qualify for Atlassian Certified Expert accreditation.

Happy learning!