Preparing for Acquia Certification

Preparing for Acquia Certification

What we will cover •  About the certification program •  Five steps of preparation

1. Understand the goals of the exam 2. Understand the exam blueprint 3. Understand the nature of questions asked 4. Find out your own strengths and weaknesses 5. Work on your weak areas

•  Tips on taking the exam •  Resources available

About us

Prasad Shirgaonkar Curriculum Developer, Acquia @prasadshir

Heather James Manager, Learning Services, Acquia @learningdrupal

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Tracks

Exam details

•  Details acquia.com/certification •  Take: Online and in-person at test centers •  Duration: 60 questions in 90 mins •  Cost: $250

Peter Manijak

https://www.acquia.com/resources/acquia-tv/conference/get-certified-acquia-certification-program-march-26-2014

Certification introduction with Peter Manijak, Global Lead for Certification

STEP 1: UNDERSTAND THE GOAL

Goal: Validate a candidate’s ability to… •  Develop Drupal based solutions

•  Understand the core Drupal architecture

•  Drupal front and back end development

•  Customize and extend existing modules and

themes

acquia.com/blog/how-to-build-a-drupal-team

Who is the certification for?

•  Not for novices (< 6 months experience)

•  6 months + experience in areas outlined in

exam objectives

STEP 2 - EXAM BLUEPRINT

The exam blueprint

Domain % of Examination

1.0 Fundamental Web Concepts 10%

2.0 Site Building 30%

3.0 Front end development (theming) 27%

4.0 Back end development (coding) 33%

https://www.acquia.com/products-services/drupal-training/certified-developer-exam-blueprint

What knowledge is needed?

•  Fairly good understanding of all the three core

Drupal domains

–  Site Building

–  Front end development

–  Back end development

STEP 3 - UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF QUESTIONS ASKED

Nature of questions : Scenario based •  Scenario: situation with a use case or a client

requirement

•  Question: about the scenario or the problem

•  Options: four or more choices with possible

resolutions

Sample question You are running a popular local news portal. A mobile app developer in your

area approached you for a permission to syndicate your content on their mobile app. They are requesting the content be made available as a feed rather than in HTML format.

How can you provide list of latest articles in RSS format?

1.  Create a view with a Feed display filtering only the Articles content type

2.  Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type and under filter options

enable the RSS filter

3.  Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type and under Style output

options select RSS Feed instead of Unformatted List

4.  Create a view with a Page display filtering only the Articles content type, modifying the .tpl.php file

for the view and render the output in RSS format

STEP 4 - FIND OUT YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES

Find out your own strengths and weaknesses •  You might have made a judgement about

where your own skills

•  Quite natural for a person to be more

experienced in one of the domains than others

•  Quite likely that a person has hands-on

experience on certain topics

Self-assessment tool

•  Access the sheet here:

•  bit.ly/acquiasat

Self-assessment tool

bit.ly/acquiasat

Rank your skills •  Scale of 0 to 10 against

each test objective

•  8+ implies strengths. •  5 to 7 implies some prep

needed. •  Less than 5 a lot of prep, or

guided instructions required.

STEP 5 - WORK ON YOUR WEAK AREAS

Step 5 : Work on your weak areas •  Challenges

–  Find and study documentation and

knowledge resources for the topics

–  Find enough number of practical case

studies covering the topics.

Site Building Review

Review several (3-5) Drupal 7 projects

Ask questions: •  Why the configurations are the way they are?

•  What can be changed or improved?

•  What are the issues or support requests raised by the

client?

•  What changes were made to initial configurations and

why?

Front end development

Find custom themes developed by your

team over last year

Ask questions: •  Is the theme implemented exactly as per the designs? If not, what changes

were needed and why? •  Are theme regions optimum? Is there any redundancy?

•  Are there any theme settings? •  How are CSS and JS files called in the theme? •  Are there any preprocess functions used? Why?

Back end development

•  Need an overall understanding of Drupal’s

API, core hooks system and their

applications. –  Attend a module development course

–  Build a small module on your own

–  Try the Examples Module

https://drupal.org/project/examples

Tips

Taking it at an exam center...

•  Arrive 15 minutes before

•  Bring copy of your registration email

•  Photo ID

•  Reschedule? 24 hours prior

For Online

•  Check the system requirements

•  Install software 1 day in advance

•  Select a silent room

•  Keep a bottle of water handy.

•  Switch off your mobile

•  Don’t use 2 monitors,

As you take the exam...

•  Start with questions you know

•  Save harder questions for review

•  Go with your instinct and first response

•  There are no trick questions

•  DON’T overthink!

Resources

Free E-book available soon

http://training.acquia.com/

Any questions?

http://training.acquia.com/

Thank you!