Failed Miserbly

[Michael Gold]

I took my ACP-120 Exam AND failed MISERBLY!

That walk away from the building I took the test in was a short but LOOOONNNGGG walk back to my cruiser. 

My areas of struggle: 

1.0  Access, Permissions, Security: 30%
2.0  General Project Configuration: 85%
3.0  Issue Types, Fields, Screens: 16%
4.0  Workflows and Automation: 22%
5.0  Notifications: 20%
6.0  Advanced User Features: 37%
7.0  System Administration / Administering Jira: 0%

I walked out of there with the thought that I didn't know a dag' g'own thing. This was my first time taking the exam. The questions on the exam were soooo....uh....well, let's just say I stared a lot and the time didn't make it any better. To me, the questions were much of the time very subjective. But, that's me. 

I am going back to the drawing board. I will take the exam again in about a month or so. I have many things on my plate to take care of, but, I will attempt to pass it on my second try. What do you all think? Do you have any suggestions to help me achieve this goal of passing my exam? I am interested. 

Thank you for reading. 

[Julia]

Hi Michael, yes!  I have several suggestions to help you!

Start with the new free ACP-120 Exam Success course. You can find a link on this page: https://university.atlassian.com/student/activity/832603-acp-120-jira-administration-for-cloud-exam

• Go through the entire course and take note of areas where you're less proficient.  The course does a great job of laying out the expectations for each exam topic, so you can gauge how ready you are for each one, and where you need further study.
• Especially for the areas you've identified for more study, get hands on practice in the product -- explore all the features and related configurations.  Use the sandbox setup guide in the course to set up your environment, and use the lab challenges guidelines in the course to augment your exploration in the product.
• Make use of the Atlassian documentation to research more about the areas you're unfamiliar with.
• Use the course's Trello study plan template to document the areas where you plan this additional work.
• Study the many practice questions included in the course, and especially ALL the explanations of all the answer options.  Make sure you understand why every incorrect answer is incorrect. Do this even for the questions you answered correctly during the course.  The cert team has put extra teaching into the practice question explanations that will help you out on the exam.
• Take all 5 of the free Skillbuilder courses recommended in the Exam Success course.  We also recommend some of the foundational Jira Admin courses -- if you think you might be missing good grounding in some of the admin areas, consider Jira Administration Part 1 and Jira Administration Part 2 as well.
• Some of the Skillbuilders have a PDF Student Guide or "Slides and Notes" document.  Download this and use it to follow along with a lecture, and mark areas to come back to for more review.

Take 6-10 weeks for your study plan, to make sure you have time to cover all the topics.

We wish you success on your next attempt -- please let us know how it goes!

--Atlassian Certification Team

[Jeanne Howe]

@Michael Gold 

Don't beat yourself up over this. In my experience, the exam does not test your knowledge of Jira as much as it tests your ability to take a test.

The questions, again in my experience/opinion, are ambiguous. You will often find your self trying to decide between what Atlassian considers to be "best practice" and what you actually do in reality within your instance. 

Best of luck

[Julia]

@Michael Gold @Jeanne Howe 

Atlassian Certification Team here!  We want to provide you assurances about the exam questions so you can go in confidently knowing that you're not being evaluated on anything subjective.

(In fact, if you identify an exam question where you think the correct answer is subjective or the question is ambiguous, we encourage you to submit a support ticket so we can take a look.  Subjectivity has no place in our exams -- our goal is to help you show us what you know.)

Let's take a look at how we ensure this:

1. Every exam question has required documentation.  The exam authors need to provide an explanation for why the correct answer is correct, and why each of the incorrect options is wrong.
2. Every incorrect response MUST be defensibly incorrect.  For example, if either adding roles or adding individual users to a permission would solve a requirement, you will see that the question always asks something like "What is the most scalable solution?" or "How can you accomplish this with the least administrative overhead?"
3. You will see the word 'Definitely' in many questions.  For example, "Which two roles does Greta definitely need? (Choose two.)" 
4. All of the questions and their explanations are vetted in many layers of QA by subject matter experts, who are tasked with flagging ambiguities or subjectivity.  

If you're stuck on a question and you're struggling to identify the correct answer, a really good strategy is to remember that there is always a documentable reason why an incorrect response is incorrect.  Re-read the question to see if there are any details you missed the first time.  We put into the question all the information you need to know to eliminate the incorrect responses.  (This information can be nuanced, just like real life!)  Then start figuring out why the options must be incorrect.

Get fluent with this strategy by testing yourself on the many practice questions you'll find in the Exam Success course.  Study all the explanations!  Every question you see on the exam also has an explanation like this.

:-)

Atlassian Certification Team  

[Jeanne Howe]

@Julia A few observations:

You stated

          (In fact, if you identify an exam question where you think the correct answer is            subjective or the question is ambiguous, we encourage you to submit a                        support ticket so we can take a look.  Subjectivity has no place in our exams --            our goal is to help you show us what you know.)

This is a timed exam. When we come across a question we feel is ambiguous, we are supposed to take the time to copy down the question and the reason we feel it is ambiguous during this timed exam?

You stated

1. Every exam question has required documentation.  The exam authors need to provide an explanation for why the correct answer is correct, and why each of the incorrect options is wrong.

Unfortunately, this documentation is not provided as part of your exam results, so how do we find the documentation the exam authors are referencing. We are not looking for you to provide the answers, just the documentation that supports the question.

You stated

1. Every incorrect response MUST be defensibly incorrect.  For example, if either adding roles or adding individual users to a permission would solve a requirement, you will see that the question always asks something like "What is the most scalable solution?" or "How can you accomplish this with the least administrative overhead?"

Both of these statements are subjective:

         "What is the most scalable solution?"

          "How can you accomplish this with the least administrative overhead?"

Your companies processes and requirements will impact both scalability and administrative overhead.

For me this still drills down to what Atlassian considers to be "best practice" and what you actually do in reality within your instance. 

I am not trying to discourage people from taking the exams, but I do want them to realize there are gaps between the training material, the exam, and the result information that is provided to the exam taker.

As the exam taker, receiving a document that provided a link to the specific documentation that supports the question I answered incorrectly would not only boost my exam study guide, but would also provide a checks-and-balance for Atlassian to ensure all of this data is included in your documentation and exam prep courses.

[Julia]

@Jeanne Howe ,

We have good news for you about this! 

In the exam UI, there is a "Comments" feature that allows test takers to send a comment to Atlassian.  Simply write a brief comment such as "This question is ambiguous."  After the exam, submit a support ticket and let us know to you commented on a question that you believe is problematic.

Regarding this concern" Your companies processes and requirements will impact both scalability and administrative overhead." -- absolutely, we agree.  This is why we are very careful to design the questions so that the answers we designate as incorrect are always and completely incorrect in the context of the information provided within the question.  

We now provide greatly expanded exam topics lists for study for most of our exams -- these PDFs contain links to Atlassian's product documentation, to help round out your study plan.

:-)

Best Regards,

Atlassian Certification Team

[Dietmar_Doerschlag]

@julia  from Atlassian Exam team, thanks for  this very helpful information and the insights you provided. 

In regards to this comment " 1. Every exam question has required documentation.  The exam authors need to provide an explanation for why the correct answer is correct, and why each of the incorrect options is wrong", I had a question.

Our study group recently took the available Atlassian ACP-120 mock exam questions posted at https://university.atlassian.com/student/path/838340/activity/1054385 and came across an expected correct answer that was obviously incorrect (the issue was that the exam stated that parallel  sprints are not available in team managed projects; upon a bit of research, we found that the functionality in Jira online was changed after the exam question was posted and we found it to be working as per the latest release is our sandbox).

That being said, can you elaborate on how Atlassian in the ACP-120 exam ensures that  the  expected answers is actually based on how the latest available release functions, and that we are not expected to answer contrary to how we proved the functionality in our sandbox testing and available release notes?  And therefore, having configured my Sandbox for weeks, I can be assured that how I proved the software to be working is actually reflected in the expected correct exam answers? 

Many thanks. And, Jira is awesome.

[Joanna Thurmann]

Hi @Dietmar_Doerschlag ,

Sorry for the delay! Julia is no longer with Atlassian so we didn’t notice your comment right away.

To answer your question, yes, Cloud product changes occur frequently and your sandbox might have new features that aren’t yet in the exam questions.

For that reason, we update the Exam Success course—which is the new and improved certification prep course—at the same time as the exam, so both content matches.

We looked into the matter and you were likely enrolled in the old version of the certification prep course.

We sent you all an email with more information. But if you and your study group want to get a head start, you can enroll in the updated certification prep completely for free: ACP-120 Jira Administration for Cloud Exam Success. This version includes expanded learning content, knowledge checks, and additional sample questions.

We have also taken steps to make sure that no one else will access the older version.

If you have any other issues, please reach out to the University support team to make sure we see it right away!

Once again, sorry for the delay and confusion. Good luck on your exam!

[Dietmar_Doerschlag]

Hello Atlassian Team,

Thank you kindly for the reply and the thoughtful comments.

Happy to report that myself and everyone else in my study cohort passed the exam, on first attempt, which was terrific, two weeks ago. I guess rigorous study and configuring the h+ck out of a Jira Sandbox always pays dividends. 

We had enrolled into the latest available ACP-120 exam prep course on Atlassian University back in late March.  I did receive an email today about the updated course now being available which is great, and passed that information on to our certification mentor. We appreciate you made us aware of this. 

I would like to share one particular exam taking experience at my local PSI test center on this forum. The experience at the local PSI lab was a bit "off". At the end of the exam, after completing all 75 questions, I had given myself sufficient time to review "flagged" questions. It was rather surprising when, upon answering ACP-120 question #75, the testing software submitted my answers straight away and skipped the question review part. WHAT? Suffice to say, I almost had a heart attack. I passed regardless of this software mishap, which is what matters. BUT, had I failed the exam, I would understandably be rather upset right now. I logged a ticket with PSI, but they have no idea why this happened. Just a word of caution to others in the community. 

We are now on to studying for the next certification (ACP-420). If we run across software functionality in the latest JSM sandbox release that is different from the expected mock exam answers, we'll be sure to post an update here. 

Thanks again.

Dietmar

[Joanna Thurmann]

@Dietmar_Doerschlag Congratulations to you and the study cohort on your achievement!  I am celebrating right along with all of you and doing a happy dance. That's so awesome and really makes my day. 

I am sorry about your experience at PSI, however. I am glad you logged a ticket with them since that is always the first step. Right now, I will also pass this along to our internal team also, so they are aware and can look into it further with PSI.

As for ACP-420, if you encounter issues, please reach out with a ticket to make sure we see it right away. And keep us posted on Community about your successes. Congratulations once more!

[Dietmar_Doerschlag]

The link to  your ticketing system has been bookmarked @Joanna ThurmannNot that I expect I will need it.

The Atlassian  University courses y'all put together are fantastic. The mock exams are very helpful, and the detailed explanations make a big difference to exam success. I know hat some might complain about the exams (result of stress), but please pass on our kudos and thanks to your e-learning team, fantastic job. 

I admit the ACP-120 counts among the more (or even most) challenging certification exams I have written, but it is true that one should only be granted the ACP when you really understand Jira, and the exam makes sure that is the case. I had a lot of fun configuring every exam element in my Sandbox which I am sure makes all the difference.

Re PSI, yes that was a weird one. I would have scored so much higher :) or not  [kidding], not that it matters anymore. I am more concerned about those who come after me.

Our certification success rate (ACP-620,120 and others) has been pretty stellar. Three of us completed both the ACP-620 and ACP-120 starting with Jira Bootcamp in late January in just over 3 months which made us very happy indeed. Can I mention that  I hope it continues that way?  Feel free to DM me via LinkedIn and I'd be more than happy to share how I / we planned and prepared for both the ACP-620 and ACP-120 (the PM in me speaking now). Cheers.

[Joanna Thurmann]

Good morning, @Dietmar_Doerschlag Thanks for all that enthusiastic and helpful feedback. I would love to hear more about how you planned and prepared for the exams. I just connected via LinkedIn and will message you there further. Stay tuned. And meanwhile, pass along my congratulations to all others in your study group. That's fabulous! Many more cheers and smiles from me to each of you :-)