Certified Data Architect

The “Year of Certification” continues. Third month, third Certification. And my 5th Certification in the past 6 months (shame I didn’t do one last November!) This one seemed to follow on nicely from the Certified Data Cloud Consultant. And indeed there is a little overlap.

As per usual I was ready to start the exam 10 minutes early. The authentication process is now second nature (I know where I have a blank enough bit of wall for the photo part to work). I had done some practice questions and scored around 73%. Way better than the required 58%. So I was feeling pretty good.

As soon as the first question came up it confirmed what I already knew. This is a more scenario and problem solving based exam than the previous straight knowledge based ones. And that makes sense. An architect is all about problem solving. So the questions have some context. They might need to explain the objects that exist, the business process being followed or the competing requirements. If you are going to sit this then definitely be prepared to read more and think more about the questions.

Despite the additional detail in the question I still dook about my usual amount of time. As per previous exams I completed this one using about 30 seconds per question. I felt I was slower than this. I was intentionally reading each question twice and making sure I considered all the answers. So I’m not sure why I was so fast. My advice is definitely to not go for speed! There are no bonus points for speed available!

Overall I’m not too unhappy with the results. If you multiply the area percentages by the coverage in the exam guide that works out as about 70%. Clearly a good margin of comfort over the 58% pass mark but still plenty of room to improve! The Data Migration part clearly caught me a bit. I think I was too caught up with using ETL tools rather than Salesforce ones. I still think in many cases those might be a good idea!

Data Migration is something I’ve not done too much of on the platform so it makes sense that I was weaker here. I’m not sure how relevant this will be in future exams but I thought I had studied up. Clearly not well enough!

I was using another book from my Packt bundle which is looking like increasingly good value! I’ll review that in another post.