Among several other XM Cloud platform enthusiasts, I was invited to take part in the XM Cloud beta certification. Taking into account that I was also involved in beta testing of XM Cloud Developer Fundamentals Training earlier in July (it is available now and I highly recommend the one), I would like to share overall experience feedback and suggest what to expect if you’re aspiring to obtain the knowledge and certification about the new Sitecore’s flagship product.

The full version of the XM Cloud certification exam is expected to go live in October, however, SUGCON NA attendees have a rare opportunity to become among those first getting certified with XM Cloud at a discounted price. This link contains more about this offer. Otherwise, you may wait a few weeks until authors analyze the performance of beta takes and set up final pools of questions to go live with, at a price of $350.

XM Cloud certification is a traditional Kryterion Webassessor proctored exam. All the same requirements are in place, is it was used before. I may use a built-in laptop camera but please ensure your room is well-lit and silent and what’s most important – while the exam is in progress, you do not move your eyesight away from your monitor. If you do it a few times – the exam will be terminated. There were several cases already.

So, let’s take a look at what to expect. The exam itself is not difficult, however, you won’t be able to pass it without having specific product knowledge and experience. If you work for a partner and can play with XM Cloud sandbox – that will serve you well, especially for the first four competencies from the list below. Other than that – Sitecore stood up with exceptionally good documentation for XM Cloud products and it covers the entirety of certification competencies.

Сompetences you must prove to pass:

XM Cloud Architecture and Developer Workflow, including its benefits and the new terminology, understanding headless architecture and supported frameworks.
Deployment of XM Cloud Projects. You must be fluid with Deploy App, and know CLI and other ways of deployment.
XM Cloud Pages is another new competency devoted to the new editing interface and its FEaaS capabilities.
Security for Developers covers a mixture of both old good items security (users, roles, access rights) and the new security model coming with Sitecore Cloud Portal and the types of its users.
Renderings and Layout, especially what comes with Headless SXA – Page & partial Designs, Rendering Variants, as well as legacy stuff such as datasources and placeholders and settings.
Sitecore Content Serialization is similar to the one from XP10 certification, however, CLI is much more important with XM Cloud, same is serialization. You need to know how to configure it and set up rules.
Sitecore APIs & Webhooks is a totally new section. It is all about the nuances of Experience Edge and publishing into it, the ability to pull the data through GraphQL, the ability to create and handle webhooks, and new features of both XM10.3 and XM Cloud – Authoring and Management GraphQL API. Make sure you practice well in GraphQL IDE.
Data Modeling is mostly another old good section, however, it requires knowledge of how it all plays well together with Experience Edge as well as a few SXA tricks.

Topics not included in the exam:

Next.js or react coding questions
Any C#-based API questions, as it was in the previous XP10 exam
Docker/containers related questions
XM Cloud pipelines or any other internal customizations
Migration from XP to XM Cloud
Built-in personalization, despite it could be a good set of questions

I want to admit: this exam is probably the best and well-balanced of all the Sitecore certifications I came across (and I passed them all). The authors did an exceptionally great job of evaluating the average professional working with the new platform and setting the bar significantly enough to ensure the level of their expertise meets the desired standards of certification.

In any case, I wish you the best with obtaining your new in-demand certification!