How to Pass SAFe5.0 Scaled Agile at First Time

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!