My Approach to Passing the Professional Cloud Developer Exam (First Try!)

I decided to study for this exam as a way for me to improve my overall knowledge in GCP, while looking at different application development approaches for my work and personal projects.

Exam Content:

The 60 questions were accurate with the official exam guide, and were heavily focused on looking at approaches to deploy, modernize or troubleshoot applications, with Google’s principals of SRE, DevOps and Security. Here are some focus topics:

• Kubernetes and GKE
• Serveless solutions with Pub/Sub, Cloud Functions, and Cloud Run
• Data Modeling for different databases
• Authorization and authentication: IAM, Workload Identity, JWT tokens, etc…
• Integrations with Operations Suite

Resources:

As part of my study methodology, I like to use many resources, aiming to understand things from different points of view and make sure that I’m not just ‘memorizing’ the audio from a lecture or the text from the documentation.

• Ranga Karanam's PCD course on Udemy
  Ranga is an excellent teacher. However, certain topics, such as Data Modeling and GKE - Kubernetes - were a bit difficult to grasp, due to the lack of visual diagrams.

• Alex Levkovich practice tests on Udemy
  His practice tests were updated with the current exam content, and I also appreciate the fact that I was able too write him questions regarding some of the quizzes, and he always wrote me back, with in-depth answers of the ‘why’ in certain solutions.

• Some of the GCP skillsboost labs/courses.
  Many of the labs on the PCD learning path were outdated and had bugs, thus I wasn’t able to finish them, however, the GKE labs were great.

• GCP guided labs from the official documentation for Cloud Functions, Cloud Build, Firestore, Pub/Sub and Spanner

• Even though certain things were outdated, I used the lectures and labs from the A Cloud Guru PCD’s course

• The following official GCP playlists and videos from YouTube
  Modern CI/CD on GCP
  Engineering for Reliability
  Kubernetes Best Practices
  Beyond your GCP Bill

• Nana’s incredible Kubernetes tutorials on YouTube

• Anton Putra’s YouTube tutorial on Kubernetes deployment strategies

Study Approach:

I strive to be efficient with my studies. As in my previous certification studies and preparation, my main goal wasn’t to ‘pass the exam so I could have a badge.’ I wanted to make sure that I really learned what was featured in the test, and that I could use these concepts and newly acquired knowledge to become a better developer. I went beyond lectures and practice tests, did hands-on-labs and self-created exercises on things that I felt needed improvement.

With that in mind, here was my methodology:

1. Daily Minimum: I carved out at least 1 hour every day, even if it meant dawn sessions or airplane lectures. I found consistency trumps cramming when it comes to certification prep! [ yes, I was attending AWS re:Invent while preparing for this exam. That wasn’t an excuse, though, I still made sure to put at least 1 hour everyday early in the morning before going to the incredible re:Invent sessions! ]

2. One Take & Reflection: I gave each Ranga lecture a single watch, no matter how complicated concepts felt. I'd then pause and ask myself: "What can I use from this in a real project?" This kept me learning, not just passively listening.

3. Practice Tests: After initial chapters, I tackled the official GCP sample exam questions. Then, I dove into related docs, taking notes and recording myself explaining answers or picturing solutions. This active interrogation solidified my understanding and made me focus even more on the lectures from Ranga’s course.

4. Hands-on Labs: I went through labs and the extra resources mentioned here. It’s was fun to practice CLI commands, tweaking Kubernetes YAML, deploying Cloud Functions and Cloud Run apps , modeling Spanner, Firestore and BigTable.

5. Problem Solving: I dug into practice tests from Udemy and A Cloud Guru, focusing on understanding the ‘problem’ - i.e practice question. I'd record my voice memos analyzing the "why" and then do labs related to ‘question-specific’ topics.

6. Walking and Visualization: My daily walks and errands doubled as study time. I'd listen to my voice memos, replaying and refining my grasp of GCP solutions. By the end, I had 53 recordings (15-25 minutes each) with my self explanations.

With this study process, I felt productive, and excited about putting all this knowledge in practice in the real world, while also acquiring confidence to take the exam on December 28th, 2023. I passed it on my first attempt, and felt that this preparation journey was 100% worth my time. I’d totally recommend studying for this certification, my goal with this blog is to show you that with a mix of different resources, a daily study routine and practical application, this exam will improve your insight on GCP’s incredible possibilities for application development.