Post CTD Exam thoughts

I passed the NI CTD Exam with 87%, hurrah! 

Here are my thoughts and general advice after having sat the exam. I'll keep quiet on the content, of course...

• Don't forget your NI.com password for the account you registered for the exam with. You need to log in to start the exam. I have 2 accounts (1 work, 1 personal) and got quite confused when I couldn't see the exam details on my personal account.
• Unlike the PSI exam provider that NI used before, with Examity I didn't have any major technical issues such as the connection dropping or lagging. They use the GoToMeeting web app to watch your screen, and you can see and type messages to the proctor in another browser window.
• The proctor was very thorough - we spent half an hour looking around the room, opening my drawers, checking both sides of each of the tissues for my hayfever in case I had hidden notes in there. It was a sunny morning and I was asked to draw the curtains fully and turn the lights on, which annoyed me. I ended up starting the exam late despite logging on 15 minutes early.
• At one point before the exam I was told to open a certain webpage and "not scroll away" and was left for >5 minutes in silence. I tried leaving a message in the chat window because I didn't know if I was having technical issues, I guess the proctor went for a break or to speak to another exam candidate. That was not fun. 
• I was made to end a few processes in Task Manager - honestly can't remember which. The proctor made me scroll through the background processes slowly. If you want to make the checks a bit faster, I'd recommend exiting from as many background processes as possible e.g. by quitting your VPM provider via the tray icon, even if is not running. Also turn off any unused Bluetooth connections.
• There were some things about the rules that annoyed me: I had full-screened the browser window to give myself more screen space but was told this wasn't allowed. I'd recommend hiding as many browser toolbars as possible because the resolution of the VM that they use doesn't adjust so you end up having to scroll to see the task bar, and it's easy to accidentally click on your main computer's task bar by accident. The display resolution of my laptop was set at 1366*768, not sure how users with higher resolutions found it. 
• At one point in the exam I accidentally used Ctrl + N to open a new Windows Explorer window and it opened a new browser tab instead - oops! It's really hard to avoid keyboard shortcuts.
• The actual exam was similar to the practice paper. 
• I added the LabVIEW instrument drivers folder to SearchDirectories.cfg, but had a last minute panic when I realised this file wasn't one of the files zipped up by the zip tool, and if the markers hadn't done the same then my code would be un-runnable. Thankfully I didn't lose marks for this.
• There was a handy countdown timer in the top right hand side of the screen, which had a button which allowed me to leave the exam early once I was done with my answer and had zipped it up using the tool. The zip tool was not quite as described in the paper, so I was quite nervous that I might have got it wrong and wasted >4 hours of my life in a dark room. 
• During the exam, I realised I was spending a lot of time flicking between 2 pages of the paper, so I made a second copy of the paper and opened it in a new tab within Adobe Acrobat Reader, which was really helpful. At first I was opening the paper side-by-side with TestStand but with such a small screen I soon gave up on this and would open one at a time.
• I received my exam results exactly 2 weeks after sitting the exam, which is less than the 4 weeks mentioned in the guidance doc.
• I didn't receive any feedback when I passed the exam, just my % score and the certificate. I understand the exam is negatively marked - perhaps that might be the reason, or that they didn't want to give too much away about what makes a good answer, so it isn't learnt by rote. I think it would be nice to receive some feedback though as otherwise the exam is not much of a learning experience. Does CLD/CLA still receive feedback on each aspect of the mark scheme nowadays? I wonder if I would have received feedback if I had failed. 

Before the exam, I also contacted NI to clarify a few points. The certification@ni.com email address no longer works, but my email was picked up by services@ni.com. (They assumed I was a man, boo.)

The things I asked about were [my own summary, for clarity]:

• Q: Are LabVIEW Adapter Pass/Fail steps acceptable for non-UUT instruments in Setup and Cleanup?
• A: Yes, this helps terminate the test if initialisation fails.

• Q: Where do I put the zip file generated by the zip tool?
• A: This is mentioned in the exam paper.
  
  
• Q: Do I assume tests on the UUT will always pass in the exam, as in the practice paper? I see that it says test failure with nominal conditions is an automatic exam failure, but wanted to make sure I understood correctly.
• A: During the exam, the UUT will always pass. The grading procedure relies on a successful execution with passing DUT. It will also be graded with a failing DUT. 
  
  
• (I asked why this wasn't stated but apparently it should be obvious to people. As someone who spends about 25% of my time writing requirements, I really like stating the obvious!)
  
  
• Q: I see that the exam is negatively marked. In the case that I am running out of time, am I best a) set failing steps to skip (and anger Sequence Analyzer!), b) remove failing steps?
• A: If normal test execution fails, the exam cannot be graded for other cases. So if the test cannot be executed and pass with normal DUT, the exam will fail. Do not leave anything in the exam, what causes failure or error during execution!
  
  
• Q: I don’t see any mention of the report in the mark guidance in the video, only in the exam topics. Is it graded? The example solution report doesn’t show the fan/modes read and written, just passes and fails, which doesn’t seem that useful. 
• A: Report settings are graded. If it is not specified to include any additional data, then you can skip numeric results. 
  
  
• Q: Is ticking the ‘log’ box recommended for steps that aren’t (multi)numeric limit tests? E.g. logging fan temperature. I like doing this as it helps my debugging/verification of results and makes the report more useful, but would I lose marks?
• A: If you include extra logging for debugging which is not asked for, make sure you remove this before turning in the paper.

I hope this info is helpful to someone. If you are sitting your own CTD exam, best of luck! Feel free to add comments describing your own experience.

  ~ Leah