How to Study for Jira Administrator Certification

In early 2016, Atlassian launched its first certification for Jira administrators. I was ecstatic to participate in the beta testing program and earn one of the first admin certs! Atlassian describes their certifications as a way to advance your career, highlight your knowledge and skills, and earn global recognition. For me, the most valuable part of the certification process was the preparation itself. While studying, I learned brand new things and explored parts of the application I hadn’t visited in a long time. Here are my study tips to help you on your certification journey.

Experience

Atlassian recommends 1-2 years of Jira administration experience. When I took the exam, I had 5.5 years of general Jira user experience and 3.5 years experience as an administrator. Even with more than the recommended experience, the exam was challenging. Even now, after over a decade of Jira use, I still learn new things, discover new features, and adapt my opinions about how to best configure settings! The year count alone doesn’t equal “experience”. There’s a large difference between causal application administration (e.g., making a setting change every now and then) and deep administration, where you’ve built an application from scratch, upgraded it (for Data Center), customized and maintained it, and worked with users and the configuration daily. If the majority of your time has been spent as a casual administrator, you’ll want extra learning and preparation time. Luckily, there are many preparation methods.

How to Study

On to my study and preparation tips!

1. Read everything about the certification process on Atlassian’s web site. There are two certification types: Certified Associate and Professional. There are also different exams for different deployment types (e.g., Cloud and Data Center) and application types (e.g., Jira Software and Jira Service Management). For Data Center, note which Jira versions the test will cover.

2. Read the entire Jira Administrator’s Guide for the version the test covers. See: Cloud | Data Center If you don’t have the latest software version, also read any newer release notes. (Data Center)

4. Visit every page in the application admin area to remind yourself of the settings and capabilities. Also explore the settings at admin.atlassian.com.

5. Read Atlassian-provided exam study guides and sample questions. Take any available on-demand training from Atlassian’s free library.

Recommendation: Approach exam topics from multiple angles. For example, if you have a small organization, with few projects and users, you’ll want to consider how a large organization, with hundreds of projects and thousands of users, would handle a problem. Think of scenarios that don’t apply to your organization but would be common for others. Think of areas of your application that aren’t setup quite right and how you’d do it better. It’s not enough to understand your application’s intricacies, you need to understand how Jira is generally intended to be configured.

6. Join or form a study group.

My experience: Some of the beta testers formed our own unofficial study group. We used the exam study guide to write all the questions we thought might be on the test. Then, we discussed and answered each question in detail. We met remotely each week for a month to review our answers, discuss alternatives, and add additional notes and experiences. Many of us say these study sessions are why we passed the test.

7. Read my 9 Ways to Learn Jira Administration article. It’s full of ideas like things to try in your application and taking my online Jira and courses. Also consider reading my Jira Strategy Admin Workbook. The book is about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, and why. When I started writing the book, there wasn’t a certification, so I didn’t write it for that purpose. But it does make a great companion to Atlassian’s certification study materials.

8. Visit the testing vendor’s website, as well as the website of the specific testing center, to learn all you can about the test experience. For example, at my testing center, I needed two forms of ID. I was not able to take any belongings (e.g., wallet, phone, or keys) into the testing room.

Recommendation: Bring a pair of earplugs. They will shield you from potential distractions, like noise from adjoining rooms, your neighbor’s pencil tapping, and typing and mouse clicks that sound loud an otherwise silent room.

Final Tips

I estimate I spent 10 hours specifically preparing for the exam. I was very happy to pass, but even if I didn’t, the prep time was valuable. I learned things I simply didn’t know and explored parts of the application I hadn’t touched in a while. The certification process as a whole made me a better Jira Administrator.

Finally, the exams are challenging, so don’t be discouraged if you need to take them more than once. The most important thing is to keep moving steadily forward on your Jira learning journey. Good luck and happy studying!

Read next: 9 Ways to Learn Jira Administration | How to Extend your Jira Administrator Certification