What You Need To Know To Pass The Heroku Architecture Designer Exam

​​Well it finally happened. I failed a Salesforce exam. My first failure other than a few maintenance exams back in the day. I had thought about canceling my exam the night before, I knew I wasn’t quite ready. But in following my own advice, I wanted to keep the date. If I failed, I failed…so be it. I’d learn something from the experience either way.
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​Once I started the exam my my suspicions were confirmed...I wasn't ready. Things like which features are only available in Heroku Enterprise, and why you would want to use Heroku Redis instead of Postgres left me scratching my head. 

Here was how I fared on my first attempt:
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My Section-Level Scoring:

• Heroku Platform: 83%
• Data: 60%
• Security: 88%
• Heroku Enterprise: 41%
• Architecting Applications: 77%
• Integrations: 55%

Actual Exam Ranking:

• Heroku Platform: 10%
• Data: 17%
• Security: 15%
• Heroku Enterprise: 28%
• Architect Applications: 15%
• Integrations: 15%

​What a rookie mistake! Based on my score I hadn’t focused enough on the content (Heroku Enterprise) that was weighted the heaviest. How did I manage to do this? I know better….right?

Well, as it turns out, that there were a few core reasons why I came up short in the most important topic on the exam. The first is that Heroku Enterprise is not available to get hands-on with. So if you haven’t worked in an org that uses this version, you can’t get your hands on it. The second (and most important) reason was that I didn’t have a good enough scaffolding to hang all the different pieces of knowledge I was trying to understand. The Trailhead trailmix for the Heroku Designer exam is essentially a lot of links to the Heroku developer docs. Since they are so detailed, I was getting lost in the weeds without seeing the big picture concepts. 

In studying for my retake, I was able to create a framework for me to truly understand the different aspects of Heroku, including Heroku Enterprise. Here’s what I learned:
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