I’ve been working with Amazon Web Services for years. First I experimented with hosting my own sites on ec2 servers, then I was assigned to write an API using IAM, Lambda, Fargate and Cloudformation at work. Finally, I moved my personal sites to Elastic Beanstalk.

I set a goal of obtaining the AWS Certified Developer - Associate by the end of 2021. I hoped my previous experience with AWS would make this easy, but the test covered a lot of material I was not familiar with from experience yet, so I was going to have to study to close the gap!

My Study Process

1. January - September, 2021 - procrastinate.
   
   
2. October 2021 - I read the AWS Certified Developer Official Study Guide. First, I read the book cover to cover, then I went back and reread each section carefully and did the practice questions and exercises at the end. This book was a great introduction to the material, but it is from 2019 and studying it alone is not sufficient to pass the test. However, it did give me the background to make the most of the next study step.
   
   
3. November 2021 - Took the online Udemy class Ultimate AWS Certified Developer Associate 2022 - NEW!. The instructor, Stephane Maarek, is a master of concise teaching, which is critical because of the large amount of material to cover. The only thing I encountered on the test that he didn’t cover was AWS Glue. I did all the exercises in the course, and combined with the book I read above, it was really helpful.
   
   
4. December 1-16, 2021 - I took practice exams from SkillCertPro. They had 10 or more exams worth of questions, and I worked through most them. The exam itself is 65 questions, and I practiced over 600! When I missed a question, I went back and researched the section the missed question was from.
   
   
5. December 17, 2021 - I took the actual exam from my home using Pearson Vue (sign up for the test at www.aws.training/certification). They locked my computer with special software and watched me on a webcam to make sure I didn’t cheat.
   
   My test taking strategy was to answer each question in less than a minute, flagging ones I was unsure about. You get about 2-1/2 hours so after 1 hour I had an answer down on each question and was all warmed up and over my nervousness. I then went back through the flagged questions and thought them through and fixed the answers. Finally, I had a half hour left so I started at the beginning and walked through each question again until time ran out.
   
   
6. After a few days they post your results and I passed. My score was 810/1000 and passing was 730/1000.

Conclusion

• The Udemy class was more helpful than the official study guide.
  
  
• Doing exercises and practice questions, and then following up and reviewing material when you get a wrong answer, is critical.
  
  
• There is no easy way to pass this test because of the breadth of material to cover. I worked on it for two months solid, nights and weekends. I put more than 200 hours into preparing for it.
  
  
• The process of studying for it will up your knowledge of the AWS ecosystem tremendously, so it’s not time lost.
  
  
• The exam questions are more involved than the practice ones, but they are just a “wrapper” around the basic concepts. Read the question, read the choices, reread the question, and then ask “what basic concept are they going after here?”. Use the process of elimination to narrow down the possible answers. You will find that most questions “fall into place” if you use this process.