DEV01 Exam

[rebeccabowe]

Hi everyone,

I have attempted the DEV01 Exam twice now and I seem to be just off the margin of passing. I have redone all the end of module mini tests, the practice quiz and have had practical project building experience. Is there anything specifically that I can focus on that will help me tackle the exam better?

Here is my precentage breakdowns for both tests I have taken: 

Thanks,

Rebecca

[Michael_S]

Hey @rebeccabowe - that sounds really frustrating but, don't worry, we've got some wonderful folks in the community who can help.

I'm going to summon our resident MVP and certification expert @devneetmohanty07, as well as my good friend @bweschke who can recommend some resources and revision tips! (Thank you both in advance!).

Question for you @rebeccabowe - is there any part of the exam which you felt were difficult, or you were unsure on how to answer?

[bweschke]

Hey @rebeccabowe , glad to hear that you are perservering in taking your exam despite your setbacks for achieving your goal. I have no doubt that you will achieve what you want because you are here asking for help. 😊

I would like to recommend that you look at this webinar- Blue Prism® Developer Certification Readiness - Webinar. This webinar was delivered by a few members of our team who have taken the exam and have some suggestions for how to be sucessful. I would suggest you start at about 25 minutes in for content related to your issue. This might spark questions that you have about the content of the exam and areas which you are unsure of that you can post about here so we can help you get what you need to pass your next exam. 

[devneetmohanty07]

Thanks @Michael_S for tagging me in this post and apologies for the delayed response from my end. 

@rebeccabowe - I know it can be really frustrating to not pass the exam after repeated tries. Something similar happened to me when I appeared for Installation Engineer certification which I was able to clear on my second attempt rather than the first one. It was a setback of its own because I cleared all the other certifications in the first try itself. What it taught me was that there were primarily two things which were holding me back:

1. Practical Implementation: Although I know that the nature of these certification exams are based on the course content and what's being taught in the modules but just solely relying on that doesn't really justifies the certification exam themselves. For example, if I am appearing for an Installation Engineer certification, I practically need to setup an entire infrastructure myself at the end of the day be it small scale or enterprise wide, that doesn't really matter much. When I actually did setup a small scale infrastructure for one of my company's pilot environment that's when I came to know a lot of things which I did not know in the first place even after reading 100 of pages of the Blue Prism Infrastructure Document. It does not necessarily mean that the resources are not good but what it means is that I cannot practically refer to the actual way of doing things which what these resources tell me until I actually do it myself. Same goes for any development based certification as well I would say. You need to develop 3-5 actual automation use cases before you can have these concepts ingrained as part of your muscle memory. That's when certification exams are cleared like a breeze!
   
   
2. Not Going Through Past Mistakes: Good thing about Blue Prism certification exams is that they tell you exactly in which section you did answer incorrectly. This can be a great indicator to mainly focus on those topics only. In you case, Best Practice is what is lacking mainly from what I see. For this you should refer to the following references for sure:
   
   Blue Prism Best Practice Guide 
   Object Design Best Practice 
   Logging Best Practice 
   Control Room Best Practice 
   Attribute Tuning Best Practice 
   Exception Handling 
   Work Queues 
   
   
   Again even if  these references will help you greatly or you may already have gone through most of these concepts, what really important here is that you put to real practice and use them in your automated workflows to get a knack of it.

Hope these pointers help you out and I am looking forward to your next certification pretty soon!

Regards,
Devneet

[LeonardoSQueiroz]

Hi @rebeccabowe,

I'd like to add just two pieces of advice to the excellent suggestions above.

The first would be to delve deeper into best practices and exception handling. The exam goes beyond simply knowing how to use Recover and Continue — it really tests your understanding of why you're handling exceptions in a particular way: when to propagate them, how to design retries, and how you ensure your logs offer complete visibility. Sometimes we have preconceived notions that can lead us to error. A great exercise is to take one of your existing automations and recreate it with an exclusive focus on error management — simulate different business and system exceptions, observe how they behave, and check if each one follows the appropriate recovery path based on the exception handling guide. Try testing and reviewing.

Active practice — I also recommend using the quizzes and questions from Blue Prism Academy. After finishing one, try creating your own version, slightly altering the scenario. This helps train your mind to think like you're taking the test, applying concepts in new contexts instead of just memorizing answers. Doing this type of practical review often helps uncover "blind spots".

Regards,