Solutions Architecture Professional is a simple moniker for know the mile-wide breadth of the AWS product offering deep enough to name the parts, fit the pieces together, explain how the pieces should fit together, optimize how the pieces might fit together then answer detailed product capability questions about all the pieces. And just because the exam is less VPC focused and more AWS Organizations and security focused does not mean the exam got easier - this remains the most difficult certification exam around. I've held this certification since 2017, most recently re-certifying in 2023.
I totally enjoyed preparing for this cert!
Unsurprisingly, the infrastructure, analytics, SageMaker, and AI services details felt like the typical what's-new-in-these-services re-certification grind. Yes, service sprawl is real. And yes, as an AWS evangelist that introduced *most* of these products to internal audiences at Amazon I had lots of "I remember that!" moments.
But the data exploratory analysis and modeling topics, which are mostly unrelated to AWS, required me to set up a bunch of enabling infrastructure on AWS, and then remember Python, and then remember a bunch of Python libraries so I could implement every single SageMaker built-in algorithm. Because how else are you going to remember which metric on which visualization requires tuning which hyperparameter?
And all that hands-on work felt good, in a geeky sort of a way. I got this certification in 2023.
Agile is more than Scrum, and Kanban, and a manifesto. And that is exactly why I got the Agile Certified Practioner certification - it's not limited to a single agile methodology. Rather, it covers a broad range of agile methods (Scrum, Kanban, XP, FDD, Crystal, DSDM, etc) and doesn't play favorites.
Unfortunately, this certification is a certification anti-pattern - the acronym is horrible and no one has a clue to what it is or what it covers. So let me help spread the word. To qualify to sit the exam you 21 hours of training in Agile, 1500 hours of Agile project management experience and pass a 3 hour, way too expensive exam that covers all the major Agile project management methodologies.
I earned the PMI-ACP certification on January 3, 2014 and I've renewed it through 2026.
There is a reason the Project Management Professional is THE project management certification.
It's comprehensive. The Project Management Book of Knowledge is a tome of processes and tools for PM.
Add in the 4500 hours of required project management professional work and the most difficult exam I've taken and you end up with a certification that is worth the effort.
I earned the PMP certification on June 10, 2007 and I've renewed it through 2026.
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