Why we exist

The Drupal Center of Excellence is a community of practice. We focus on establishing best practices, sharing knowledge, and helping Drupal professionals advance in their careers. We created this Center of Excellence for a few driving reasons:

After inheriting many Drupal websites built by previous developers, we observed many bad practices resulting in problems, unreliability, and extra work.
After interviewing many Drupal developers who claimed to be experts, we realized that we needed a better way to assess a developer’s true skills, abilities, and approach to work.
After asking several prospective developers to take the Acquia certifications, many failed because they didn't know how to prepare for the exam.

Drupal expert mentor teaching best practices

Drupal Center of Excellence Playbook  

TOP 5 BEST PRACTICES

We asked 100 Drupal Experts what advice they would give to an up-and-coming Drupal developer. This is what they said.

Get involved in the Drupal community. Join Drupal.org and the Slack channel. Ask for help. (Thanks for the advice Entjik Jeffrie, Daniel Cothran, Nate Andersen, and David Loor).
Don't reinvent the wheel. Search for contrib modules that serve your purpose. A solution to your problem probably already exists. (Thanks Tim Cullen, Anoop John)
Never stop learning. Share your knowledge. Find a mentor and be a mentor. (Thanks John Kurrie)
Plan your content strategy before getting started. Steven Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People talks about, "Begin with the end in mind."
Keep performance and security in mind, especially when building modules.

Tips for Passing the Acquia Certification Exams

We interviewed 7 Acquia Triple Certified Drupal Experts (formerly referred to as Drupal Grandmasters), one of whom (Gordon Makely) is a Triple Certified in Drupal 7, Drupal 8, Drupal 9, and Drupal 10 (a quadruple-triple certified Drupal expert) and asked how they would prepare for the Drupal 10 certification exams. Read the entire article by Triple Certified Drupal Experts on Crushing the Acquia Certifications.

First and foremost, these exams presume that you are an experienced Drupal developer. Do not attempt an exam without having significant experience working in Drupal websites.
Read Acquia's study guide, Drupal.org documentation and the API documentation. Watch videos from Acquia Academy and subscribe to Drupalize.me. Understand the fundamentals.
Manage your time wisely. Don't hesitate if you think you know the answer. Go really fast. Skip the question if you are unsure and go back to it later. Some questions are really tricky, so pay attention to every word.
Use a simple laptop with all the apps closed for the exam. If your are normally accustomed to working on a work station with multiple monitors, headset, speakers, VPN, lots of apps running, and a web cam, this will cause problems.
If you know it, you know it. Don't over-think. If you know the answer, check it and move on. But, if there are two answers that are almost the same, this is probably a trick question. Slow down. Read carefully. Use process of elimination.