How I Pass The AWS Certified Developer Associate Exam

I recently passed the AWS Certified developer Associate exam and I think the process of how I prepare for the exam is worth sharing. That’s why I’m creating this blog post. (And it is also my first blog post in my entire life).

To set expectations this blog post come with 4 parts. Motivations, Review Materials, Review Process and Exam Tips.

Motivations

I am a Senior Software Engineer currently transitioning and training to become a Technical Solutions Architect. I think one of the best steps for me to prepare myself for Technical Solutions Architect role is to gain knowledge in technology as much as I can. That’s why I think taking AWS Exam is a Good Idea to learn more about AWS and Challenge my learnings by taking the exam. And more importantly passing the AWS Solutions Architect Associate exam is one of the requirements for passing the Technical Solutions Architect training. So basically this is my second AWS certification and I am planning to take all the associate level certifications and Professional and some Specialty exam.

Review Materials

Mostly of my review materials are provided by our company. I also ready blog post from medium and watch many videos in youtube which contributes on my review materials. Below are the list of review materials that are provided by our company.

• A Cloud Guru — I can say that ACG is a decent review material for preparing for the exam. I use this for my SAA02 and DVA-CO1 exam. I can say that ACG is optimized review material but there are topics that I think they must improve or include. Because there are some questions in the actual exam that is not covered in the video tutorials.
• Whizlabs practice exams — practice exams from Whizlabs are also great resource for preparing the exam. I think the approach for the exam question from Whizlabs somehow similar to Job Bonso practice exam.
• udemy practice exams by Jon Bonso — practice exams from Job Bonso are also great for review plus I think Jon Bonso explanations for the correct and incorrect questions is better than the Whizlabs but both are great and helps me a lot in exam preparation.
• Medium blog post related to AWS Certifications — I find reading blog post from medium.com related to AWS Certifications also helps me in exam because you will learn how others prepare for the exam and you will find hint on what to expect to the actual exam and what exam topics that they encountered in the actual exam.
• YouTube — youtube also helps me in preparing for the exam. I watch video in youtube If I think I need more details about a certain topics and also I watch in youtube how others prepare for the exam.

Review Process

For the review process, I started with reading blog post in medium.com and watching videos in youtube to set expectations and to know how others prepare for the exam and what are their recommendations on how to prepare for the exam.

After reading blog post and watching videos on youtube, I started watching video tutorials from A Cloud Guru. I skip some topics because I already watch them when I am preparing for the SSA02 exam. The video tutorials are good but sometimes you need to research more about the topics because sometime I feel like I need more information about the topics and also I think not all the topics of the exam are covered by the video tutorial. But overall ACG helps me a lot in preparing for the exam. I also take all the practice exams from the ACG and tried to get almost perfect score as much as possible. I recommend that do the hands on labs because it surely helps a lot. I finished ACG review materials in 2–3 weeks.

After watching the video tutorials in ACG I started taking all the practice exams in Whizlabs and Jon Bosco. My technique in taking the practice exam, I assess my knowledge based on the first take of exam i score about 60% — 80% on the first take. Then I will review both the correct and incorrect answers. and make a notes based on the topics that I got the wrong answers because I think I need to improve in that parts. On my Second and Third round of practice exam I always try to get 100% score. But mostly I get 85% — 95% I only got 100% twice. After I’m satisfied with my practice exam result I book the exam. I finished all the practice exams in more than 1 month because I become busy in my work.

All in all my exam preparation is more than 2 months including busy days and sometimes I don’t have time to review. And I only review in weekdays about 3–6 hours a day.

Exam Tips

• I think before starting the preparation for the exam you need to find your motivation. So find your motivation first because it will helps you boost your mood.
• Do the hands on lab in ACG or any review materials because it will helps you experience the how to actually do thinks in AWS. And when you experience it stays longer in your memory and muscle memory.
• Aim for the perfect score in all the practice exam.
• Review both the correct and incorrect answers be sure you can explain why the answer is correct and why the answer is incorrect.
• Study how to do the elimination process. Sometimes you don’t know the correct answers but don’t lose hope, you can still get the correct answer by the eliminating the incorrect answers by doing that you will have higher change of getting the correct answer.
• Observe patterns in the question’s choices. Sometime. there are choices that just chance 1 or 2 words or just interchange words.
• Read the AWS services and features part of the AWS exam guide. Be sure that all the topics from there you have knowledge. Because
• The exam includes 15 unscored questions that do not affect your score. So don’t lose hope when there are questions that you don’t know the answer.

Bonus

List of exam topics that I encountered in the actual exam.

• EC2
• Lambda, APIGW, DynamoDB, Cloudwatch, Cloudwatch Events and X-Ray
• Lambda Layers, Alias and Versions
• SNS, SES and SQS
• Step Functions
• CodeArtifact
• IAM best practice
• Principle of least privileges
• ECS
• Elastic Beanstalk
• Deployment Strategy
• Cognito User Pools and Identify Pools
• SSM Parameter Store, Secrets Manager, KMS and Envelope Encryption
• CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy and CodePipeline
• HTTP error code
• Fault Injection Simulator