5 Tipps and tricks before dive into iSAQB CPSA-F Certification Exam
Few months ago i got the iSAQB CPSA-F Certification.
Today, i am trying to introduce following tipps and tricks to help one prepare the exam.
TL:DR
- Use personal Laptop and start exam 30 minutes earlier.
2. Remark your test question if you are not sure about the answer
3. Do the mock test and calculate the points yourself.
4. Use right resources.
5. Extend exam time.
1. Use personal Laptop and start exam 30 minutes earlier.
Use your own laptop
If you decide to take the test at home online, please do NOT use your company laptop. Instead, please use your own personal computer or laptop. The reason is, the test software might need notification permission of your browser, the company laptop might blocked such feature in browser by your administrator.
Click on Start exam button (e.g 30 Minutes) before your test started
Read carefully about the invitation email for the exam. You might need to attend the exam few minutes before the test really started. Especially for online test, there are some process need to be done like identify yourself, check the table and room remotly, check the test environment if it works.
2. Remark your test question if you are not sure about the answer
Like many exam, in this exam one can also remark the test question during the exam. It helps you easily go back to this question when you finish the last question.
3. Do the mock test and calculate the points yourself.
Calculate points by using examination rules.
This is a very important tricks. Not only because you can get a feeling about how the exam looks like, but also to learn how to answer or not answer certain question to get a better notes.
Concretely means that for certain kind of questions, you might get a higher points if you don’t answer it, compare to that you just answer the question but not know if the answer was correct. The examination rules shows how to calculate points.
You can find the mock test and examination guide here.
4. Use right resources.
It is always helpful to attent a training course, it takes usually around 4 days for around 2500 Euro. Also some books are the exam related.
Choose the course provider which give you second try for free.
Even the test itself is not that difficult, it might happen that a second try is needed and one need pay 250 Euro for the test again.
There are some provider in the market which promise to provide second try for free. I would prefer to choose such provider.
Also keep in mind, attend any course does’t guarantee you to pass the exam. A good preparation is needed. Preparation means read books, do the mock exam, learn how to calculate the points.
Two Books which i would like to suggest.
- Effektive Softwarearchitekturen: Ein praktischer Leitfaden
- Basiswissen für Softwarearchitekten: Aus- und Weiterbildung nach iSAQB-Standard zum Certified Professional for Software Architecture — Foundation Level
5. Extend exam time.
If the language which used in the exam is not your mother language, please contact the test provider and you will get around 15 minutes extention.
The description of questions in the exam are usually easy and clear, so why not just test in a foreign language and get more exam time.
I hope you had a fund time reading this page. Please leave a like in case if the content was helpful for you. I’m also glad to hear your feedback.
The Motivation at the end.
For reader who are interessted in my motivation to take this exam. :-)
For someone who first hear about the short-term iSAQB CPSA-F, it is one of many Certification of software architecture. iSAQB CPSA-F stands for Certified Professional for Software Architecture (CPSA®) — Foundation Level. The certifiation schema was overseed and developed by the International Software Architecture Qualification Board e.V., which is a non-profit organizaition. More details can be found on their official website.
One of my motivation to take this exam is: In past years i have a lot experience on full stack development, joined different projects as different role, from embedded system, micro services to serverless programming on Azure and AWS, have worked on MVP projects from scratch and also worked on software product which alreay have a code bases over years. Also DevOps, IaC belongs sometime to the daily work.
The good thing with such experience is that you can see a lot, think a lot and do a lot, never get boring, the downside is sometime you get overwhelmed and wanna slow down to have an overview of certain topic or dive into certain technology.
As there are too many possibilities and resources for one to learn things, one can also easily get lost with such oppertunity. At least for me, under my Coursera and Udemy account, there are many interessted course already booked, since years, but still not finished or even not be started.
To get a certificate might be the easiest and shortest way to refresh your knowledge base systematically. But if you are very good at time management and can easily stay focused and motivated, you might need to do a certificate to archieve it.