Aiming for an AWS Professional Architect Certification?

Here are some lessons I've learned from taking the AWS Professional Certification (and passing!)

I recently wrote a blog article on my experience passing the Google Professional Architect exam, and I wanted to write a follow-up about the AWS Certified Solutions Architect-Professional exam. The AWS Solutions Architect Professional certification is recognized as one of the most difficult IT qualifications to earn and is consequently one of the most sought-after credentials in the industry, so it’s important to have a clear strategy to approach this certification.

My path to Technology Certifications

Technology certifications have played a critical part in my career. Early in my career, I earned a number of certifications,? in COBOL, Mainframe, Java Architect, Oracle DBA, Microsoft, ITIL, etc. The qualifications demonstrate commitment to the highest level of professionalism, observance of industry standards, and continual learning. These attributes can help improve credibility and reputation among a? network of contacts as well as with customers for looking into new business opportunities or submitting bids for projects.

Obtaining the?AWS Professional Architect Certification can help advance your career in a multitude of ways, including finding new positions, demonstrating an ability to take on a new project, or establishing yourself as the go-to expert on your team.

My Journey with AWS?

I joined IBM in 2019 as Chief Architect and got certified as a Distinguished Architect. From IBM in 2021, Kyndryl was spun-off with 90,000+ employees operating from over 100 countries and $20 billion in revenue.?

Following Kyndryl's separation from IBM, I started concentrating on hyperscalers. I consider my current role to provide thought leadership and be a trusted advisor to our top strategic accounts. I work on creating technology roadmaps for a few of our top strategic accounts. I focus on the hardest problems that other solution architects can’t solve and build high-quality, architecturally sound solutions that are aligned with our customer's business needs.

I first learned about the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud when I was a director at FreddieMac. My curiosity rose as I learned more about AWS, which jump-started my journey with AWS. I began working with AWS in 2014, offering my clients my knowledge and experience to assist them in developing solutions and growing their businesses on the cloud. I've been using AWS almost every day for more than three years while working on a range of difficult projects, including various stages of our cloud migration process. The business culture at Kyndryl played a part in my decision to take the professional-level exam. The professional certifications provided a means for me to stand out in a company that values certifications and encourages its colleagues to earn them. Kyndryl has more than 3,500+ individuals with AWS certifications.

By mid-2022 I knew that I wanted to renew my certification, and as I said earlier, thankfully, Kyndryl is extremely supportive of its associates' achieving advanced certifications. This time, I chose to pursue the professional level certification rather than simply renewing my system architect credentials.

How can you pass the AWS Professional Certification exam??

One of the most important things you can do to get certified is to register for the exam! When pursuing a master's or undergraduate degree earlier in life, we all participated in writing exams. The main issue is that you currently only have 10 to 12 hours every day and you are working. Prioritizing what matters most to us personally and to the organization is necessary.? To take the test, you must register for it. You are not working toward a definite goal until an exam date is set.??

I have been lucky to have been exposed quite a lot to various AWS projects in the last 10 years. This has given me a good breadth of knowledge and confidence. I have been working in a mixture of roles, shifting from technology strategy to architecture. I have architected, built, and deployed serverless solutions as well as more traditional solutions based on the AWS well architected framework. I also had numerous chances to explore event-driven architecture and use services like EKS, MGN, and Kinesis.

It's frequently advised to study the numerous white papers that AWS offers, and doing so undoubtedly would have given you the information you needed to ace the test. While the AWS white papers contain relevant information, they’re not the best to use for studying. The white papers often send me to sleep, so for me, reading them would not have been a productive learning strategy. The white papers frequently lack the scenario-type context that you would experience during the test. There are? numerous options for AWS certification preparation classes. Kyndryl has a large collection of on-demand training resources, and these can be invaluable to those studying for this exam. However, in my personal experience these were not very helpful as they did not fit my personal learning style?

Knowing your learning style is imperative to creating a study strategy that works well for you. My schedule emphasized performing the work and delivering the services and solutions. . I ended up doing sample questions from multiple websites and performing labs using AWS qwiklabs based on the professional certification syllabus. Make wise decisions about the reading material you select. The videos in the AWS skill building program are largely just repetitions of information I already knew, which I realized along the way. Instead, I prefer looking through reading material that I can skip around according to my interests.

Professional AWS Architect certification Tips

If you haven’t taken the Associate Architect exam, I would highly recommend that you go that route first. As per the exam guidelines, you are no longer required to have an Associate certification before pursuing a Professional certification. The Professional certification requires a lot of experience and knowledge, whereas the Associate is more geared towards knowing the details of AWS services and their use cases.

Here are the main lessons I learned from my scholarship :

1. Discover the AWS language

For example, non-functional requirements. Resiliency means the capability to recover.? Recovery Time Objective (RTO), is the time it takes to recover from a failure, and Recovery Point Objective (RPO), is the maximum window of time in which data might be lost after an incident. Fault-tolerant means the ability of a system to remain in operation even if some of the components fail. Throughput means how much data is transferred can measured by bit/s, bps, or TiB. IOPS means input/output operations per second. It is a common unit of measurement for storage and system performance. Also, learn about Mean Time to Failure, Mean Time to Repair, Mean Time Between Failure, Availability, Reliability, Performance, and Cost-effectiveness.?

2.? Read the answers instead of the questions.?

Try to eliminate obviously incorrect answers. Shortlist answers. Break the question into smaller parts. Read it in reverse order.? Sometimes long questions are hard to keep up with. Read the last sentence of the question, and make sure you understand each part rather than focusing on the question as a whole. Ignore all questions at the beginning of the test that require an answer with more than 3 choices.

3. Select questions for answering based on difficulty.?

Do not be intimidated by the questions or the test. If the questions and answers took up the entire screen (huge questions), I immediately skipped them. I didn’t read it or scan it; I moved on. So, I didn't waste time reading questions that I would later return to and read again. I then read and answered all of the other smaller questions in the order presented on the test. If I couldn’t quickly identify an answer, I’d take my best guess and flag the question for review later. Don't leave it unanswered. Giving a "best guess" as to the solution was more effective.

4. Practicing Time Management

The AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam spans three hours and consists of 75 questions. That means you have roughly two minutes to answer each question. While that might seem reasonable, some of the questions are quite long and complex. For a few of the longer ones, the question itself might be three paragraphs.? Developing your own method for dealing with this is the key to passing the test.

Conclusion?

I genuinely hope you found this beneficial, and please reach out to me if you want? additional advice, I’m always happy to speak with people that I can help. If you've read any of my other articles or blogs, you may already be aware of my willingness to impart knowledge. In the end, what really matters is how you treat your clients and how you perform your work.?

Good luck on the professional certification!