PL-300 Power BI Exam

Just completed the PL-300 exam and I must say it was one of the harder exams among the few I have taken recently for my career growth. The passing score required is 700/1000 and time seemed so tight I literally used the entire time given down to the last 5 seconds with the last few questions unable to be reviewed.

I gotta say it's a sigh of relief when I saw my grade attained to be 770/1000 (Passed). I was honestly mentally prepared that you know what if I fail, it will be okay because it was that difficult. But I'm grateful for this outcome.

In hindsight, some reflections on what helped and what could have been done better:

1. Skillcertpro

Using a study question bank really helped me. I bought from Skillcertpro a study pack of 30 exam question sets. Funny enough I only practised on 8 exam sets because it was a lot (each exam practice took me 2 hours to finish). This was I think the biggest contributor to my learning.

2. Online Instructor Course

I took an online instructor-led Power BI Data Analytics course that follows the Microsoft Learning Path. The course provided me with exposure to Power BI and Power Query and made me understand the foundation of these two software. I must emphasise the foundational aspect because the PL-300 exam was far far beyond what was taught in this class. Beyond learning the ETL process on Power Query and creating visualisations for a dashboard in Power BI, you have to understand the WHY behind doing the actions because the exam focused a lot on case studies. I'd say take a course to get an understanding of Power BI if you never touched the software before but if you have experience with the software then this is not necessary.

3. Skillable guide lab practice and Microsoft Learning Path

The Skillable lab practice provided as an additional self-assessment by the online course was beneficial because I took the practice on my own time and completed it myself to better understand Power BI. It is very comprehensive in learning Power BI hands-on, and since the class might be slower and miss out on some parts, this Skillable lab really covered each chapter accordingly. However, one issue was that it only covered the basic Power BI topics (transform data, create data models, visualise data, share data). The harder topics like DAX Functions, Data Connections, RLS Data Security, Data Modes and PBI Service were barely touched upon.

Ultimately, doing practice questions from the question bank really helped me tackle the exam questions because I did notice a trend after a while that questions kept reappearing. 

Now I can finally put away this stressor and focus on my next upcoming major exam at the end of the month: PMP