Introduction
Hello everyone!
In this article, I would like to share my experience of passing and preparing for the ACP-300 exam(Agile Development with Jira Software), talk about my motivation and the benefits that I managed to extract.
Motivation
I am very interested in various practices and approaches to software development. It seems to me that this is very closely related to the approach to using Atlassian tools in general. And this exam assumes that the main audience will be Product owners, Scrum masters, Project leads, who are engaged in their daily work in managing the product backlog, team backlog, sprint planning, use various reports to collect metrics and further optimize team processes and of course use Jira Software for this.
In my company, I am a global administrator, so I regularly communicate both with members of development teams and with Scrum Masters and Agile Coaches - so I consider it my duty to promote the correct use of Jira.
Preparation process
Here I will share my experience, I think that many are already using it.
1) First of all, I analyzed the exam page:
- What target audience is this exam for;
- What knowledge is being tested;
- I appreciated how applicable it is in my daily work.
2) Secondly, I studied the content in our community by searching the words "ACP-300":
- It gave me an idea of the exam;
- About the guys who saw the value in passing an exam;
- I studied other people's experience and opinions.
I highly recommend reading the following articles:
- "10-week study plan for ACP-300 Agile Development with Jira Software";
- "Tips for ACP-300 exam".
3) I followed the path of studying courses from Atlassian University - this is a great platform where you can find the most correct information.
The courses offer structured information that conveys the right THINKING, allowing you to correctly configure and use the Atlassian tools that become your knowledge as a result!
I really enjoyed the training "Getting More from Jira Software Server", I highly recommend it to everyone!
4) And of course, the study of official documentation, I recommend studying all the topics, because from time to time I came across what I use every day, but I still found something new or different from the usual.
5) Many people write that they set themselves a separate instance to prepare for exams. It seems to me that for this exam it is more useful to use your existing instance (of course, a clone of it is better) - this will allow you to see clear and meaningful information on the reports, evaluate the performance of your company's teams, evaluate the effectiveness of processes, and much, much more.
Exam
I passed it remotely, here a lot has already been said by the guys in other articles, from myself I can add - do not worry, having reached this stage you have already become much smarter and everything will work out for you! Even an unsuccessful test does not always reflect your real knowledge.
Do not give up and you will succeed!
Comparison with other exams
This was my 4th exam (I have already got an ACP-100, ACP-400 and ACP-600).
I don’t know how correct it is to measure its "difficulty" relative to other exams - because it is aimed at a completely different audience than global Jira & Confluence Admins.
For me, as an administrator, it seemed difficult, because as part of the exam you will be provided with business cases for which you need to find the optimal solution (business solution), also knowledge of Atlassian products will be useful to you: Jira, Confluence, Crowd, Bitbucket, Bamboo, Crucible and Fisheye.
Probably, if you regularly use Jira reporting in your daily life, it will be much easier for you.
Gained benefit
I got great pleasure from the process of preparing for the exam, I once again rethought my understanding of Agile methodologies, compared theory with practical application experience.
Well, and most importantly, I discovered reports in Jira for me, which will allow me to evaluate information that is extremely important for a team / company at a moment in time.
Having received this knowledge, my work process will not be the same, I will definitely apply it in my daily work. That's wonderful!
Conclusion
I am now planning to take a closer look at Confluence in preparation for the ACP-200 exam.
I am sure I have a lot to learn and I am very happy about this opportunity!
Don't give up and you will succeed!
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