How to Pass SAFe5.0 Scaled Agile at First Time

3/27/2020

After passing the Professional Scrum Master I (#PSM I ) certification last year, I was so pleased my company Ericsson is encouraging the employee with Program Director role to study #SAFe and get Certified as a #SAFe® Agilist.
The first step was I attended a two days training called Leading SAFe® 5 course delivered in our office site by a company called #Netmind (www.netmind.es).
The course content was structured the same way to cover all 6 sessions in the exam topics on in rough portion to the exam question percentage:

SECTION 1: Thriving in the Digital Age with Business Agility 13%
SECTION 2: Becoming a Lean-Agile Leader 29%
SECTION 3: Establishing Team and Technical Agility 9%
SECTION 4: Building Solutions with Agile Product Delivery 33%
SECTION 5: Exploring Lean Portfolio Management 11%
SECTION 6: Leading the Change 4%

Believe it or not, the course was pretty intensed, after half a day my brain already started to fill with all unknown acronym like Agile Release Trains (#ARTs), Program Increment (#PI) Planning, Release Train Engineers (#RTEs), Epic Owners, SAFe-House of Lean, SAFe Lean-Agile Principles etc.
Then I understood, this two days course is JUST THE BEGINNING! I will have loads to study to follow up with all SAFe framewrok and these Lean-Agile principles. And I meant to take the exam 30 days after attending these two day courses.
The exam SAFe 5 Agilist Exam are in a format Multiple choice, 45 questions are randomized, can skip questions and answer later Exam question format and you have 90 minutes (1.5 hours) to complete the exam. To pass the exam, you need to get 35 out of 45 (77%). The first exam attempt is included as part of the course registration fee if the exam is taken within 30 days of course completion, but after study I understood it can also be extended 2 weeks as a grace period.
After returning from training with my day job to do, I had managed only to spent less than 1 hour study on weekdays. So most of my study was done on Saturday or Sunday mornings on average 1.5-2 hours per weekend.
I also tried three times of the monk exams. I got 62%-> 67% then on the first two round. Then I decided to take notes and re-study the one I did not get right before my third attempt. Finally I got 87% on the 3rd attempt on my third week of self study. I was planning to keep practicing the mock exam till I got 90% but I did not have this option.

I decided to get my exam done when I was taking an annual leave on a Tuesday. This was one day after the 30 days period when the grace period of 2 weeks actually automatically kick in. I was so relieved when I passed the test. Although only very few questions appeared in the mock, my exam score was exactly 87% again. So I suppose if you follow the study guide you would be pretty much covered.

Below is a snapshot of links you may want to go through even before taking the training.
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/implementation-roadmap/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/business-agility/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com /lean-agile-leadership/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/organize-around-value/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-core-values/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/lean-agile-mindset/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/safe-lean-agile-principles/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/assume-variability-preserve-options/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/visualize-and-limit-wip-reduce-batch-sizes-and-managequeue-lengths/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/apply-cadence-synchronize-with-cross-domain-planning/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/unlock-the-intrinsic-motivation-of-knowledge-workers/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/decentralize-decision-making/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/business-owners/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/customer-centricity/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/design-thinking/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/continuous-integ
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/Portfolio-SAFe/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/value-streams/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/strategic-themes/
http://www.scaledagileframework.com/guardrails/

I hope you find this information useful and best of luck with your study!

10 Comments

Mann

4/7/2021 02:23:36 am

Hi,
you have mentioned that you studied the contents in the links from study guide. did you go into the nested urls in those links ?
All my time is going into jumping from reference urls in the pages.
Hope you can help.
Thanks
Mann

Sandy Lien link

4/7/2021 10:39:29 pm

Hi Mann
Thank you for asking.
Yes, I had gone through these URLs links including some of the nested urls. But not all of them, only for the terms or topics which I wanted to understand a bit more. Notice that some of the nested urls would come up in different urls links, so you might find yourself has been some same links before.

Hope this make sense and good luck with your study.

Best Regards
Sandy Lien

4/8/2021 11:22:04 pm

Thanks Sandy. This helps

Steve

4/22/2021 08:51:13 am

Hi Sandy,

Very nice read! I have to take my SAFe 5 exam within the next 4 weeks or so. I wandered, what do you mean with the mock exams? Thanks for the reply!

Kind regards, Steve

4/22/2021 10:51:33 am

Hi Steve,
Thank you for asking.
With the leading SAFe training I attended, the exam within 30 days was included as part of the package. Once I had registered for the exam preparation, there was practice test and sample questions available.
You may want to check out the links below:
https://www.scaledagile.com/certification/certified-safe-practitioner/

Best of luck for your exam!
Sandy

4/22/2021 12:49:02 pm

Hi Sandy,

I will check it out in the course. Many thanks for the quick reply!

Best wishes,
Steve

Melin

4/23/2021 04:06:18 am

Are you able to take the practice test over and over or only 1 time?

Wawa

5/28/2021 06:03:02 pm

Hi Sandy,
Thank you for sharing your journey towards being certified. I enjoyed reading it bec I also have been recently certified in PSM1 Scrum Master and then the company wanted me to attend the SAFe 5.0 Safe Agilist Training and be certified. I didn't realize that SAFe had a many acronyms, and yes, it is pretty intense. My background is the same as yours. I'm into Portfolio & (Program & Project Management). Hence, I share the same sentiment. I hope to be able to grasp the new learnings and pass the certification too.

10/22/2021 03:02:52 pm

Hi Wawa,
In my personal case, I think some kind of Scrum Master certification is first would be very helpful. I also did PMSI Scrum Master first with scrum.org. Then did Leading SAFe with scaledagile.com course to get SAFe Agilist.
One to me is more making sense for small team, the others can go all the way to the organisation level.

For scaledagile, in our company we are recommended to do Leading SAFe or SAFe Scrum Master or SAFe Product Owner/Product Manager first. Then you can go more deep into SAFe for Teams/ SAFe DevOps/ SAFe RElease Train Engineer etc.

For me the path your company suggested sound good and you would be pretty much covered as a Program Manager.

I hope this make sense.

Elisa

9/27/2021 02:21:50 pm

hello,
I am trying to get the Safe Agile certification, but unfortunately have failed the last 2 times. i would like to take a 3rd attempt but wanted to know if i should be expecting the same questions as in the previous exam or completely new ones?
Many thanks,
Elisa

Sandy's Study Notes

How to Pass SAFe5.0 Scaled Agile at First Time

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