How to pass the AWS DevOps Professional Certification exam with a 100% score

Step 1: Read the exam objectives

Start with the official DevOps Engineer Professional exam guide. The document explains the domains, their weights, and exactly which skills are in scope for DOP C02. You will see SDLC automation, configuration management and infrastructure as code, resilient cloud solutions, monitoring and logging, incident and event response, and security and compliance.

Reading the objectives first gives you clarity. Without that map, you risk spending time on topics that will not be tested.

Step 2: Do practice exams before studying

Begin with a set of practice questions to learn how AWS frames scenarios. Early exposure reveals blind spots and common patterns, which primes your brain for the deep dive that follows.

As you study, you will recognize concepts from those first drills and your retention will improve. Treat every wrong answer as a pointer to a topic you can master next.

Step 3: Take a course

Once you know your weak areas, commit to a structured course. AWS Skill Builder and AWS Academy have solid free content to get you moving. If you want a deeper dive, platforms like Udemy offer step by step coverage for pipelines, deployments, observability, and automation.

I like to pair a free course or a YouTube playlist with a paid course. The combination gives you coverage of the official material and a second voice that explains tricky ideas in a different way.

Step 4: Do simple hands on projects in the AWS console

Reading only gets you so far. To understand DevOps on AWS, you must build. Spin up small, inexpensive projects that connect directly to exam tasks. For example:

1. Create a CI/CD pipeline with AWS CodePipeline that pulls from a Git repository, builds with AWS CodeBuild, pushes an image to Amazon ECR, and deploys to Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS.
2. Implement a blue green or canary deployment with AWS CodeDeploy. Add automatic rollback on failed health checks.
3. Write an AWS CloudFormation or AWS SAM template that provisions a serverless web API with Amazon API Gateway, AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB. Deploy the stack and practice updates and rollbacks.
4. Centralize configuration and secrets with AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store or AWS Secrets Manager. Rotate secrets and update your application automatically.
5. Build observability with Amazon CloudWatch metrics, alarms, dashboards, Logs Insights, and AWS X Ray tracing. Trigger Amazon SNS notifications on alarms.
6. Automate account guardrails with AWS Organizations, service control policies, and AWS Config rules. Use AWS Control Tower patterns to standardize new accounts.

These exercises build intuition for the tradeoffs AWS loves to test. You will be ready for questions that ask which design delivers the most automation, the least operational effort, or the fastest recovery.

Step 5: Get serious about mock exams

When your study plan feels solid, pressure test yourself with full length, timed practice exams. Review every answer. For the items you miss, write down why the correct option fits the requirement and why each distractor falls short.

Do several rounds of practice. Aim to recognize patterns such as which deployment strategy protects availability, which logging approach meets retention and encryption needs, or which scaling policy aligns with given metrics.

Your exam day strategy

Arrive with a clear plan. These tactics help under pressure.

• Read the question stem carefully and underline constraints such as “least operational effort,” “highest resilience,” “lowest cost,” or “most secure.”
• Eliminate distractors quickly. Two options are often wrong for clear reasons such as manual steps, unmanaged services, or poor security.
• Prefer managed and serverless services when they satisfy the requirement because those choices reduce toil and improve reliability.
• Make a first pass to answer what you know. Flag uncertain items and revisit them on a second pass.
• Never leave a question blank. A guess gives you a chance to score points.
• Watch the clock. Try to finish the first pass with at least twenty minutes left for review.
• Use later questions as clues. A scenario you see later can jog your memory about best practices for an earlier item.

With this plan I made two full passes, caught small mistakes, and finished with confidence. There are always variables on test day, but this approach reduces risk and raises your chances of a first time pass.

Use this strategy to pass the AWS DevOps Engineer Professional exam on your first attempt.

Other AWS Certifications

If you want additional certifications and career momentum, explore this series of AWS Certification Exam guides:

• AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner Book of Exam Questions — pair with the roadmap at Cloud Practitioner topics.
• AWS Certified Developer Associate Book of Exam Questions — cross-check with Developer Certification guides.
• AWS Certified AI Practitioner Book of Exam Questions & Answers — align with AI Practitioner exam objectives and ML exam services.
• AWS Certified Machine Learning Associate Book of Exam Questions — a bridge toward ML Specialty Certification.
• AWS Certified DevOps Professional Book of Exam Questions — complements DevOps Certification Exam study.
• AWS Certified Data Engineer Associate Book of Exam Questions — use with Data Engineer content.
• AWS Certified Solutions Architect Associate Book of Exam Questions — see the companion AWS Solutions Architect Certification track.

For multi-cloud awareness, compare with GCP paths such as ML Engineer Professional, Developer Professional, Data Engineer Professional, Security Engineer, DevOps Engineer, Network Engineer, Associate Cloud Engineer, and leadership tracks like Generative AI Leader and Solutions Architect Professional.