Aug 13, 2018
kalpesh

Magento 2 Certified Professional Developer Exam Experience

M2 Certified Professional Developer test is here for a while now and I finally got some time to prepare and appear for this test. It asks you 60 questions which you have to answer in a time limit of 90 minutes. So basically you get 1.5 minutes to answer each question. Though you should not waste time if you are able to answer the question quicker, as there are many questions in the test which are lengthy and requires more time to understand the question. If you are a non-native English speaker, you may have to read some of the questions 2-3 times before fully understanding what it is exactly asking. Passing score is 64% – so you need to get 39 correct answers out of 60, which is almost 2 out of 3 questions. At the end of the test, you get the score on screen which is great to know instantly if you passed or you need to re-take the test.

Yesterday I took the M2 Professional Developer test and passed it. I found it difficult to be honest, questions were lengthy and answers were confusing. Magento recommends developers to at least have 1.5 to 2 years of experience before taking this test to pass, but I think you can still go for the test if you have worked on 4-5 Magento 2 projects hands on with around a year of experience. I believe that is enough if you are fully into Magento and understand the architecture of the system and technical concepts of various features it offers.

I found SwiftOtter very useful, along with it’s practice test where it offers 44 questions https://swiftotter.com/technical/certifications/magento-2-certified-developer-practice-test. However, it’s not guaranteed that you will pass solely by studying their guide and practice test. You also need to understand the code and should have experience working on it in the M2 projects to clear the exam. I suggest taking the practice test once you have read and understood the topics in the guide and Magento DevDocs and are ready to face the real test.

It’s evident there’s a lot of hard work done by the Magento U team and developers who contributed to this test by writing questions and answers. It’s really hard to pass this test if you don’t have deep understanding in Magento 2 concepts and don’t have enough practical knowledge to prove your M2 abilities.

I think this test could have done even better if it had also focused on:

Security – Not a single question was asked on this topic. I am not talking about Payment, PCI and Magento Vault things when I say Security, I mean writing code that does not leave behind security vulnerabilities. It should be must for a backend or full-stack developer to at least have a basic understanding of how to write secure code, Magento had a great opportunity to include some good security questions (like CSRF token, escaping user-submitted data, XSS prevention, preventing file path exploits, sanitizing user data before saving/getting from db, etc..) here, but….

Readability – Most of the Magento developers are from non-native English speaking countries, myself included. I feel there were few lengthy questions which were just difficult to understand for non-native speakers. I also heard similar complaints from few developers who took this test confirming that they had to read some of the questions 2-3 times which took much of their time to just understand what the questions were trying to ask. That’s a disadvantage to many developers and I believe Magento U will take a note of that when writing upcoming new test questions.

Let me know your thoughts! Kudos to Magento U team for creating such an outstanding test.

15 Comments

  • Hey,
    As you cracked magento2 professional developer exam.
    I also want to prepare this exam and want to get certified can you please instruct that how to prepare and in which area i will have to deeply understand.

    • Start with SwiftOtter study guide and Magento DevDocs to understand the concepts around each questions. Note that you don’t have to cram file and method names like in Magento 1 exam, this exam is more focused on scenario-based.

  • Hello Kalpesh,

    I hope you are doing well . Can you suggest what doc should i read for clear M2 professional developer certification ?

    Please help me i want to pass M2 certification.

    Regards

    Ansar Husain

    • SwiftOtter study guide and Magento DevDocs is enough if you have hands on experience with M2 development. You can also give SwiftOtter practice tests when you are confident that you are ready for the exam.

  • Hello Kalpesh,

    I have 8 Years experience in Magento , in which I have 2 Years working experience in magento 2. I am Magento Certified Developer as well.I have also completed the swiftotter documentation.

    I am planing to take magento 2 exam. But from your blog , I can understand that the questions are not like bookish knowledge, but on the hands on experience. So If you please can provide some few questions. That will be helpful

  • Hello Kalpesh,

    I have 2+ years experience in Magento 2 , and I have read the DevDocs as well as the swiftotter Doc and in the swiftotter exam I got 84%. But unfortunately I am unable to pass the Real Exam. I found all the questions are real life scenario based.

    I am preparing for the next attempt , but my question is there are 1000 of real life scenarios we can create , so for which scenarios we need to prepare , like what type of scenarios they will ask.

    I know I have seen the questions , but unfortunately I dont remember exact questions. But you are much better experienced then me. Of you Please can help

    • i got 87% in swiftotter exam. in the real exam i fail too . i had same question that you have . is there any suggestion .

    • Did you face the exam for the 2nd attempt? Could you please provide your feedback.

      • Hi! I only faced both the exams (M2 Developer and Plus) once because I passed in the first try. However, it’s common many developers fail in the first (and second) attempt. These exams are hard and you should not feel bad or question your knowledge if you have hands-on experience and still fail. It’s normal.

    • Hi! Sorry for late reply. Honestly, it’s really common to fail in the first try. Don’t feel bad or question your knowledge in M2, it happens (and happened) to many expert M2 devs where they couldn’t crack it the first time. Good thing is, you get the experience of how the real exam is different than SwiftOtter so you can better prepare next time accordingly and pass it. For example, some people are really good in M2 but they cannot complete the exam in time because of lengthy and confusing questions and answers. Best luck!

  • For magento 1 you have given some sample questions, for magento 2 do you have the same?

  • Hello Kalpesh,

    How many time will take the exam after getting first try? Is there re-take test fee???

    Regards,

  • Hi Kalpesh,

    I never seed one person who has multiple skill like you. I am M2 front end developer and I am planning to give certification exam so can you please suggest to me what I need to do. I go through all content on devdocs what next?

    Also, can you please guide me what type of exam question the exam etc…

    Thanks in Advance

    Ghanshyam

  • Hi Kalpesh

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Welcome to my Blog

Kalpesh MehtaHelping Magento developers in their day-to-day development problems since 2011. Most of the problems and solutions here are my own experiences while working on different projects. Enjoy the blog and don't forget to throw comments and likes/+1's/tweets on posts you like. Thanks for visiting!

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