𝗠𝘆 𝗔𝗭-𝟰𝟬𝟭 𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 | 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝗼𝗳𝘁 𝗖𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗲𝗱: 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘁

Hey everyone!
Last week, I sat for the AZ-401 (Microsoft Certified: Agentic DevOps Engineer Expert) beta exam.

To be honest, I wasn't fully prepared for this exam.

I received the exam voucher with only two days remaining before its expiration date, so I decided to take on the challenge.
The result hasn't been published yet because this is a newly introduced beta exam, and the evaluation process takes time.

Meanwhile, I'd like to share my honest experience.
What did I experience in the exam?

I found the exam quite interesting and well-structured. It covered a broad range of DevOps concepts, tools, and real-world scenarios, including:

𝗗𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀: Blue-Green Deployment, A/B Testing, and Canary Deployment, Rolling ,RunOnce
𝗚𝗶𝘁𝗛𝘂𝗯 𝗘𝗰𝗼𝘀𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺: GitHub-related concepts, Copilot, and AI-assisted development scenarios.
𝗔𝘇𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀: Azure Boards, work item management, querying work items, and project management.
𝗖𝗜/𝗖𝗗: Azure DevOps Pipelines, Agent, YAML pipelines, and pipeline-related scenarios.
𝗜𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗮𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘀 𝗖𝗼𝗱𝗲: Bicep and infrastructure deployment concepts.
𝗔𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Azure Artifacts and package management.
𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗗𝗲𝘃𝗢𝗽𝘀: AI agents, agent roles in SRE practices, and choosing appropriate actions when working with GitHub Copilot.
𝗦𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆: RBAC roles, Policy for standardized security, Managed Identity , Azure Secret vault

But, but, but...

One thing I personally realized:
This exam has great potential to become one of the most valuable certifications in the DevOps industry. I believe adding even more practical, hands-on, and implementation-based scenarios in the future could make it even more impactful.

Overall, I think AZ-401 is a well-designed certification that evaluates more than just technical knowledge. It challenges your DevOps mindset, technical decision-making, solution design capabilities, and understanding of DevOps security culture.

For me, it was a great experience and an opportunity to explore how Agentic AI is shaping the future of DevOps.