Category Archives: Java/Java EE

PASSED! Jeanne’s Experience Taking the AI-Empowered SAFe Advanced Scrum Master Exam

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Today I took the AI-Empowered SAFe Advanced Scrum Master certification and passed with a score of 96=7%. Passing is 82%. Like the SAFe for ScrumMaster (read about my experience) and SAFe Practitioner (read about my experience), I was optimizing for passing quickly. It went well as I was familiar with the material, not distracted and a lot of the questions were “common sense.”

Why I decided to take the Advanced Scrum Master certification now

As background, I’ve been a part time SM (and rest of the time developer) for well over a decade and been on a SAFe team for a number of years.

I use AI way more in the developer part of my job than the Scrum Master part. While I’ve done somethings like help the team make retros for more fun, I want to do more. I didn’t notice it was an “Advanced” Scrum Master course until the class started. Which is fine; I have enough experience.

That turned out to be good because the class does a lot of group activities. People with experience by definition have more experiences to share.

My path to certification

  • October 20-21 – took training course – 8 hours (including lunch breaks) a day for two days. I was happy with the class and my breakout group although a full day class on line is a lot.
  • evening of October 21 – Took the practice exam; got a 93%. Well I’m ready. The practice exam tells you which ones you got wrong which is nice. I was pleased I did that well. After work yesterday, I went the NYC Scrum User group and got home late. So I was tired when taking it which is something that makes my attention to detail again.
  • evening of October 22 – Took the real exam. Got a 97%. (The previous time I took a cert for SAFe I got the same score on the practice and real exams. I don’t know if I scored higher on the real because I wasn’t tired or luck of the draw.

I didn’t review the material, but I also didn’t have time to forget it. Also, a lot of the questions are scenario based on basic coaching or agile principles. Some were SAFe specific. And some where about AI.

What I got wrong

Given my score of 97%, I got two questions wrong on the real exam. One was on “accelerating and measuring team flow” and one was on “facilitating the problem-solving workshop”

The exam

Like past SAFe exams, all questions were single answer multiple choice with four possible answers. Many were very easy. Some had two reasonable sounding answers. I didn’t encounter many where what you would do in SAFe and what you would do in the real world differ. (On a prior SAFe exam I did).

Logistics

The exam is non proctored and you don’t have to show your environment on camera. It was nice not to have to clean up all the programming books and papers around me. The environment is exactly the same as the practice tests one. IF you fail your first two attempts you can pay for more. Then there is a proctored or unproctored option. It’s unclear to me why someone would chose the proctored option, but it exists.

After the exam

You get a score report with the % right for each category. This part looks like the report for the practice exam. Unlike the practice exam, you don’t see the questions and which ones you got wrong specifically.

Timing

This was a 90 minute exam. I finished in under half an hour. (I take exams fast and there wasn’t a lot of thinking required. Most questions it was obvious what the right answer was.)

How to Study

Granted I didn’t study. If you feel like you understood the materials from class, I recommend taking the practice test to see where you stand. Then you can read or skim (depending on how much you remember) the course PDF. For many certs I advise not to take the practice test too early because you lose the predictive value of using it to learn how you will do. But in this case, you can take the practice exam many times if you need to and get good at identifying why all the incorrect answers are wrong.

2026 buying us open tickets

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Last year I wrote a blog complaining about my failed attempt to buy US Open tickets. It’s a year later. Time to blog about it went this year!

Grounds Pass

knew from last year that you had to be on ticketmaster a few minutes before 9am to get a random spot in the queue when it opened at 9am. I was. I got number 48! Lucky me.!

I knew I wanted to buy grounds passes for one day and Arthur Ashe tickets for another. And from last year, I knew that the grounds passes would sell out faster. So I started with grounds. I put them in my cart and it worked. (Last year, they sold out while I was putting them in my cart.) I wasn’t confident that navigating to the Ashe tickets would keep these grounds passes so I took the risk of checking out with just those. Worked great. I gave my American Express card. (you have to pay by amex as it was the amex presale.

I got prompted for an “Amex Safekey Verification Code” which was a number texted to me. Last year, i didn’t get this for Amex. I did get it for another card whre the code didn’t arrive so this was an improvement.

Ashe Ticket

Then I went to buy my Ashe ticket. I did get dumped in the queue again. I don’t know what would have happened if I went to this page with the grounds passes in my shopping cart but I was too afraid to find out. This time I was number 13,567 in the queue. That was just over 90 minutes of waiting. (Last year 2200 was 40 minutes of waiting so definitely a faster rate.) This was fine; I kept it on one screen while I did work until it was my turn.

There was a good selection of tickets at different price points, sections, heights when I got in. Last year, I was annoyed that you only get told the section and row numbers (vs the actual seat number) when buying the ticket. I’m not a fan of that system and it is back. I suppose this helps them manage concurrency but as a customer I like knowing which seat number. In particular, I like to sit in the vicinity of the aisle so I don’t have to climb over a dozen people when it is time to go to tthe bathroom. I wound up with a seat 5 away from the aisle which I’m ok with. But It feels like gambling.

Conclusion to last year

I was able to buy the grounds passes closer to the time when they released more. But it was a project to keep checking. Also my friend and I monitored the morning of to see when the “resellers” would drop their prices. After all, we live nearby so good information for future years. (I won’t pay above face value but if they dropped it to that point, I would.) Moot point. They did not drop the prices. Even 5 minutes before the seats could no longer be sold they were well about face value. At which point their value went to $0 and the “resellers” lost all remaining value. They must make enough from people willing to pay inflated prices that it is worth eating the loss so people know they prices won’t come down.

java playground and jshell

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Today I learned that it looks like the Java Playground uses JShell. I knew it didn’t require a class/main method wrapper.

The reason I discovered this was because of the following code:

Consumer p = (p) -> {int var = 3; var++; return;};

In my IDE or at the command line, this code gives an error

Lambda.java:2: error: variable p is already defined in method main()
Consumer p = (p) -> {int var = 3; var++; return;};

In JShell and Java Playground, it happily compiles. This matters because I was told that the flashcards with my book has an errata and that “p” is just fine.

The Java Language specification writes about shadowing:

It is a compile-time error if the name of a formal parameter is used to declare a new variable within the body of the method, constructor, or lambda expression, unless the new variable is declared within a class or interface declaration contained by the method, constructor, or lambda expression

Lesson to readers: don’t use jshell when studying for the exam.