Tag Archives: certification

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.

PASSED! Jeanne’s Experience Taking the Java 25 Certification Exam 1Z0-831

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Oracle recently announced their new Java 25 Certification Exam 1Z0-831. [Yes, we are working on the certification study guide book] I took it this morning and passed with a 74% (I don’t try for a good score; I try to take it quickly after it comes out. In this case, I took it a few days after getting back from a trip to California. I only slept 5.5 hours last night (got home late from train delays). So I was a bit tired. But I passed and that’s what matters.

If you read my blog post about the Java 21 exam, you know there was significant time pressure. That is fixed on the Java 25 exam. I had sufficient time to go slowly and still had about half an hour left at the end which I could have used to review my answers. (I choose to turn it in without reviewing because I felt a little dizzy; probably from using the computer right when I woke up after insufficient sleep.)

Checking in

Oracle changed how they do exams since the Java 21 exam came out. (You saw a person as proctor.) The new system is described here and much better. I used it when taking Oracle cloud exams and it is the system in use now for the Java 25 exam. It comes with an online whiteboard.

The exam

While there were still some long questions, it was faster to read the code. It was either read some code and state the output (so only one set of code to read) or multiple answers with code where it was easier to tell the differences. Also there were less long questions so I didn’t feel time pressure.

Looking back I had 16 minutes left after the Java 21 exam. While I had more time left over here, the big difference is I went super slow this time while last time I had to rush to get that time. I knew I was tired and didn’t want to make silly mistakes.

About 5 questions took about 10 seconds to load. That feels like forever during an exam! And it was before 8am in the morning local time so it wasn’t a lot of people using the internet. I hadn’t had that problem on past exams.

For content, I got a good mix of questions spanning the objectives. Not as many Java 22-25 questions as I expected but that could be luck of the draw.

After the exam

I removed the “Secure Companion” app and Proctorio Chrome plugin. from my machine. It has a lot of power so I like it not being there.

I tried going to the CertView page to get my badge but got a 502 error. Will try again in the future. I used Chrome as Safari on Mac didn’t let me expand the menus in the past.

To see my exam details:

  • Expand “Exam Results” on left navigation
  • Click “Exam History” on left navigation
  • Click “Results” on this exam on the right side
  • This downloads a PDF showing which objectives you got a question wrong on

For credentials, expand “Credential Management” on left navigation. You can then download a certificate or badge. There are also links to post on LinkedIn or email a link to verify your credential. I then went on Linked in and added a credential including the credential URL.

Oracle’s new certification exam engine

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When I took the Java 21 certification, Oracle was essentially using Zoom to proctor the exam. Today I took the Oracle AI Vector Search Professional certification so I could see the new exam engine. It’s much better! (separate blog post on the actual vector search exam)

Requirements/testing the software

Oracle has a page that summarizes requirements. The exam now uses a browser plugin named Proctorio. You download the plugin right before the exam and remove it right after. IF you do a the exam readiness check, you still install the plugin after that and install a fresh copy before the real exam.

The plugin ensures you close the necessary programs on your machine. Like other browsers. Oddly it was fine with me having Slack and a few other things open. It also prompted me to unplug my second monitor.

Then it has you take a picture of yourself (actually 3-5 of them) and scan your id. The tool didn’t pick up on my id when I was holding it automatically so I had to press a button for that picture to be saved. And yes one id. There was one place that said two ids, but they only checked one. (And the exam page says one id)

The plugin lists the following information

What’s recorded during the exam

  • websites visited
  • location
  • identity document

What’s restricted during the exam

  • one monitor
  • full-screen mode
  • no new tabs
  • no clipboard
  • no printing
  • no downloads
  • no right-clicking

During the exam

The exam readiness practice was a good representation of what you saw. Very important is to click to open the right navigation with extra options. It included a calculator (available, but not needed for this exam) along with a digital exam. There were also options to zoom in or out which would be super useful on the Java cert exam since some of the questions are very long. And of course the usual functionality to flag questions for review.

On the real exam, there was also an option to report feedback on questions to Oracle. There was also a small video of your video in record mode, and a chat with proctor button. There as also an 80% battery indicator. I was at 100% so not sure what that referenced.

More on the whiteboard since that was the most important thing for me. You can use your cursor to draw on it. Or you can click the “T” button and then click where you want to be on the whiteboard and type. You have to do this each time you want to type. There’s a delete button but it deletes the whole whiteboard contents. There isn’t an eraser to erase just part. You can leave the whiteboard open or close it between questions. It remembers what is written on the whiteboard when you close it. Also, you can’t scroll to add more space so think about how you are using the space.