Until recently, the only way you could become a Certified Spring Professional was to take Pivotal’s compulsory, 4-day, Core Spring training course. On completion of the course, participants received an exam voucher that allowed them to schedule an exam at a certification centre.
At approximately £2.5k per attendee, the course is not cheap putting certification out of the reach of many self-funded developers and those that work for organisations without generous training budgets.
In May 2017 Pivotal changed their policy. Spring Certification Exams became available for individual purchase without enrolling in the course. I set out to see if it was possible to pass the exam without the Core Spring course and only using publically available material.
I set myself a budget of £250, ap
