The Bad News
When Adobe originally announced that our certifications would begin expiring every two years, there was mention of a shorter recertification exam. In fact, their announcement page still states “Certified individuals will be able to recertify by successfully completing a renewal certification exam, which are shorter and take less time to prepare for than a regular certification exam.” Unfortunately, these renewal exams don’t quite exist yet. At this point in time, you must take the full test over again to recertify.
The Jump From Professional to Expert
When comparing Professional and Expert Developer with Cloud topics, one thing really stands out, and that is some of the terminology. The Professional (AD0-E717) topics will say “describe branching using UI,” or “describe how to access different types of logs.” The Expert level (AD0-E716), on the other hand, says “demonstrate understanding of branching using UI,” “identify how to access different types of logs,” or “demonstrate the ability to deploy a project.” The differences in terminology here shows the different levels of expectation between these two levels.
‘Describe’ implies that we’re likely looking at some more memorization-type questions, and that they expect you to know the basics of these concepts. ‘Demonstrate’ is asking that we not only know these topics, but we understand them and know how to put that knowledge to work in different scenarios. The Expert level is also where you’re more likely to see questions with wording like “keeping maintainability in mind...” These types of questions really test the depth of knowledge because there may be multiple correct answers, but only one is correct with ‘maintainability in mind.’
Strategies to Recertify
With no shortcuts at this point, how should you prepare to retake these full tests? After all, we’re busy developers, so utilizing our time wisely is important. We don’t want to have to spend our days and nights studying if we can help it. The official SwiftOtter recommendation is to just take the real test as your ‘practice test.’ Cost may be a limiting factor for some people, but if you are confidently working with Adobe Commerce regularly and can afford a little bit of a gamble here, taking the full exam as a ‘practice’ could save you a lot of time. If you pass, you’ve saved yourself some study time. If you fail, you know exactly what they’re expecting on the exam; the questions won’t be the same on your next take so you can’t just memorize, but you’ll know
The gamble here is if you take the exam and fail it, you’ll have to pay for the exam voucher again to take the test again. There are no discounts for retakes. But these exams are meant to test your practical, working knowledge, so if you’re confident in your ability and working with Adobe Commerce regularly, chances are this strategy is worth the risk.