Pega CLSA Guide Book 1 - Major Changes from Earlier Certifications

Prior to the new CLSA 7.3/7.4, the earlier CLSA certifications basically consisted of 2 parts:

• Theory exam, taken at Pearson VUE 
• An Application Build, lasting 7 days in total 
  

The new certification is more stringent, and it has 3 parts.

Firstly, you need to prove that you are ready to take this certification, followed by demonstrating that you can architect a Pega solution given any scenario.

Finally, able to demonstrate that you could build a solution, implement technical features, as well as able to analyse and solve technical issues (in which you are only given some users’ observations during the exam).

The above requirements are all represented through the following exams. Therefore, to be a Pega CLSA, these are the 3 exams that you need to pass, in the given order:

• LSA Readiness exam, taken at Pearson VUE
• LSA Pega Architecture exam, also taken at Pearson VUE
• LSA Architecture Application Build Exam, administered by Pega

To complicate the certification, there are a long list of CLSA prerequisites that you need to clear in order to get the certification.

I had heard various discussions about whether the old CLSA certification or the new one is more difficult. These are all bunkums, which I, Debunkum Beaver, am here to debunk!

For example, one might feel that a 7-day Application Build is more challenging (since the duration is much longer), but don’t forget, you have full knowledge and control of the design from the beginning till the end!

On the other hand, a 3-day Application Build might sound easy, but remember, you could be thrown any sort of application that you have no idea how it was built and designed in the first place.

Even though you may be familiar with the application, it could have been modified to create issues, as well as having some other rules removed. Thus, trying to understand and fix issues of the application is still time consuming and tedious.

On top of that, you only have 3 days for the build --- mistake in 1 day would cost you 33% of the exam time, while in the past, it was less than 15%!

If you throw any of the current CLSA into the other exams, many of them will fail. Not that they had forgotten or that they are not really qualified, but rather, the requirements and structures are all different.

In short, no matter what your technical level of Pega is, if you don’t prepare, you will fail! No doubt about it! Therefore, let’s not get involved in those stupid arguments and focus on getting yourself certified!

There is, however, one thing that is certain: The new CLSA Certification is going to take a much longer time to achieve, given the list of prerequisites and the long process as shown below.

Figure 1: CLSA Learning Path Overview (Image From Pega Site)

[Check the book availability here]