Google Certified Professional Cloud Architect

How to crack Google Professional Cloud Architect Certification

Google Professional Cloud Architect (PCA) Certification is intended for individuals who perform (or willing to perform) a cloud architect or solution architect role and have some experience in Google Cloud. Google recommends more than a year’s experience in designing and managing GCP solutions and overall 3+ years of industrial experience, before appearing for the certification. In this blog, I’m going to talk about how to prepare for the Google Professional Cloud Architect (PCA) Certification and some tips to succeed.

You might already be aware that exam contains 50 questions to be answered in 2 hours. Upon completing the exam, you would immediately get the result stating Pass or Fail. The exam console/portal does not let you know the score or even insights on correct / incorrect answers. Also it is not very clear what is the passing criteria.

Preparation

1. The syllabus is quite wide and it needs good understanding of all the major services that GCP provides. Go through suitable online course, follow a learning path, attempt practice tests and register for test only when you feel comfortable.
2. Be thorough with all case studies. Understand existing implementation mentioned in the case study, analyze the current limitations, what they want to achieve etc. You may get 20 — 30% test questions on these case studies. Another important point to note is you may not have enough time to read the case study during the test. You have to almost remember the whole case study to save time during test. The best is revise the case studies as a part of your last day revision.
3. Take practice quiz to validate your understanding or to check how ready are you for the test. No questions from practice tests are asked in final test.
4. While taking your sample test, do not just focus on right answer, pay equal attention to why other options are not suitable. If required, go back to the documentation and clear your understanding. That analysis will definitely help you to deepen your understanding of concepts.

Tips

1. Do not take it lightly: Many people take it lightly as it is an MCQs exam. But believe me, it’s not easy as it appears. The options are quite close to each other. Many a times, you might feel multiple options are suited / feasible for question / case study. Choosing one out of them is bit tricky as well as needs an analysis of pros and cons of each options. The answer needs to be chosen not just based on feasible or not, but also on based on best practice / recommended over others.
2. Hands on is must: This will deepen your understanding and expertise. Make the best use of Qwiklabs if you do not have working experience of any service. Only theoretical knowledge may not help you.
3. Think thoroughly and Choose answer: Questions are not as simple as fill in the blanks or describe in one line, kind of questions. Most of the questions are situational based, which needs you to put yourself into that situation and think thoroughly.
4. Speed up is the key: Do you think 2 hours is comfortably enough for this test? It may not be, at least I did not feel so. You need to answer 50 questions in 120 minutes, which is less than 2 and half minutes per question on an average. Usually those questions are also big (you need to scroll the screen sometimes to read the complete question). Reading big question, putting yourself into that situation and choose one answer within 2.4 minutes is tough. Be prepared for it and practice well.
5. Thinking on your feet: Imagine how many unique technical situations / cases study you would be handling in a week at your workplace. I believe it won’t be more than 10 per week for most of us. In this test, you are handling 50 unique situations in just 2 hours. Believe me, you need high dynamicity and easy context switching to succeed here.
6. Keep track of timer: Timer is continuously visible at the top of the screen. It would be a good idea to pre-calculate time you want to allocate to each question. Make checkpoints for yourself. For ex. within first half an hour, I should be done with 15 questions etc. This will allow you to stick to timelines and help you speed up if you are drifting.

Resources

1. Google recommended and designed course — https://www.coursera.org/professional-certificates/gcp-cloud-architect Do bookmark or take screenshots of important slides to refer on the last day.
2. Good collection of all resources (books, courses, training videos, articles etc.) https://github.com/sathishvj/awesome-gcp-certifications/blob/master/professional-cloud-architect.md
3. Good last day revision notes https://jayendrapatil.com/google-cloud-professional-cloud-architect-certification-learning-path/

Final words

This blog gives you few tips on how to succeed. The details are not to scare you but to make you well prepared for the test with the confidence. A lot of folks try to attempt certifications using Certification dumps — trust me it can help you crack a cert, but not when you are on the role of an architect or developer, Don’t forget there is no shortcut to success !!