It's that time of the year again where certified ServiceNow professionals need to do their delta exams. I took a gamble this time and did the delta exams without much New York specific experience or study. At work, we have not yet upgraded to New York, and I also missed this year's New York launch broadcast videos.

Knowing that delta exams are open book with 10 or fewer questions plus a free retake, I took the plunge on Sep 19th, the first day that they are made available.

Prep Work

Before taking the delta exams, I took a micro certification exam on the NOW learning platform to get familiar with the new system. This step was quite helpfulas the new system works much differently from Webassessor. It's so much easier to start an exam without knowing, and you can easily lose your chance of passing if you are not ready. In fact, I accidentally started a micro certification exam while I was trying it out just now.

On the day of the exam, I had my browser tabs open to (zooming in on the New York release notes section), my personal developer instance, and New York release facts sheet article on community. I did two deltas in a row, delta for Certified System Administrator, then delta for Certified Application Developer. I'm happy to say that I've passed the exams and can start celebrating an early Christmas.

So here are my tips for you to pass the deltas with flying colors.

Steps to Take a Delta or Micro Exam

1. Book yourself at least half an hour per delta exam away from any distractions. (1 hour for a micro exam).
2. Login to the new NOW learning platform https://nowlearning.service-now.com
3. Find the certification exam that you would like to take. There are a lot of items to browse through. Not sure what's the fastest way to find your exam, but one way is to go to "My Certifications" or use the global search function with the keyword "delta" and some filtering options.
4. Once you found your certification to take, click on the "Enroll" button.
5. Now take a deep breath and make sure you are all set to go. Keep an eye on the clock. Note that there is no timer counting down for you on the new system.
6. Click on the "Next" button if you are on the "1.0 Certification" page or click the "2.0 Assessment" link from the left of the page will start the exam right away without any warning.
7. Now you will be on a page with a list of multiple-choice questions and a "Submit" button at the end of the page. You won't be able to mark a question for review. So make a mental note of which questions you need to get back to.
8. After you hit "Submit", you will see a pop up of your assessment result.

Aftermath

Congratulations if you have passed the exam! Now, repeat the same process for all your deltas. I received an email notification that my certification is maintained, and a day later I got an email saying that the same certification is once again at risk. Even logging into the NOW learning portal 10+ days later, I'm greeted with a big orange warning message which I'm assuming is a false alarm as I am fairly certain I passed the exams. I've also got certified but have "INACTIVE" displayed in one of my micro certifications.

As a ServiceNow developer, I find the System Administrator delta exam a bit more difficult than the Application Developer exam. Perhaps it is broader in scope and answers to the questions require some digging. The delta exams forced me to learn new features in New York. If you are quick at researching and have good reading comprehension, I believe you can pass the exams too.

Being someone who likes to try out new things, I would say that this experience was a bit interesting, stressful, fun, and almost felt like I was beta testing a new product at my own risk. It also reinforces my thoughts on the importance of a good UX design. Fortunately, only ServiceNow certifications are at risk and not hundreds of lives like the Boeing Max 737 accident. But to be fair, perhaps many ServiceNow professionals require their certifications to be up-to-date and losing their certifications would mean having to retake the full proctored exams at $150 each.

As true with any new system, it's clear that the NOW learning system still has some issues to iron out. Out of curiosity, if you are a certified ServiceNow professional, please make your mark via a comment or like below. I would be interested in knowing how many people are impacted by the new test system.

Now, would you like to be an early adopter and get the exam(s) over with?