It's been two years since I released the Sitecore XM Cloud Developer Certification Practice Exams as a free study companion for the XM Cloud developer certification.
Practice exams have always been one of my preferred ways to study, and at the time I was surprised to find most of the available options sitting behind a $30-$150 price tag. So I built my own, sourced the questions from Sitecore's documentation, and made it free for anyone preparing for the exam.
Fast forward to today and quite a bit has changed. XM Cloud has evolved into SitecoreAI, there's a new SitecoreAI CMS Developer certification, and naturally I started thinking about what the next version of the practice exam should look like.
Could I have simply updated the questions and called it a day? Sure.
But I did not do that. 😅
Instead, I ended up rebuilding the experience: a complete UI overhaul, 316 source-linked core questions across all nine developer competencies, multiple ways to practice, progress tracking, missed-question review, a searchable study library, and eight optional Marketplace and AI awareness questions.
Introducing: SitecoreAI Practice Studio 🎓
A lot more than an updated question bank
The original XM Cloud practice exam app was intentionally straightforward. You start an exam, get a random set of questions, and see how you do.
It worked well for what I originally wanted it to do, but rebuilding it for SitecoreAI gave me an opportunity to take the idea further.
The biggest change is still the question bank itself. Every competency has more than 30 questions (Page Builder is the smallest, at 31), for a total of 316 core questions. When you start a session, the app prefers questions you haven't seen before, followed by questions you've seen the least or haven't seen recently. Answer choices are shuffled as well.
That gives repeated sessions a lot more variety before questions start cycling back in.
And instead of having one way to use the question bank, there are now three.
Three ways to practice
Guided study gives you immediate feedback after each question, along with the explanation and related Sitecore documentation.
Practice exam is the full run: 60 questions, 120 minutes, with answers held until the end.
Topic focus lets you drill into a single competency. If Content modeling is giving you trouble, spend some time there. Same for Renderings and layout, Architecture and workflow, or any of the other competencies. You can also choose the length of your session (10, 15, 30, or 60 questions).
Answers should actually help you study
In Guided study, you'll immediately see whether you were correct along with an explanation of the answer and a link back to the Sitecore documentation used as the source.
SitecoreAI Practice Studio isn't meant to just be a question dump. The questions are written from Sitecore's documentation, with explanations to provide context around why an answer is right or wrong.
If you miss one, the explanation should help you understand why instead of simply remembering which answer was green.
A more complete practice exam
Practice exam mode gives you 60 questions, 120 minutes, and an 80% practice target. There's a question map showing answered, unanswered, and flagged questions, and you can change any answer until you submit the exam.
There's also a next-unanswered shortcut and a few keyboard controls: 1 through 4 select an answer, F flags the current question, and the arrow keys move between questions.
Figure out what you actually need to study
After finishing a session, you'll see your overall score, performance by competency, and the questions you missed.
You can then take those missed questions and immediately start another focused practice session with them.
Keep track of what you've covered
The Progress view tracks how many unique core questions you've practiced, your accuracy, questions you've marked to revisit, topic-level progress, and recent sessions.
All of this stays in your browser. There's no account or server-side profile required, and sessions survive a reload.
Sometimes you just want to look something up
That's where the Study library comes in.
You can search across the question bank, filter by competency, and expand any question to see the answer, explanation, and source documentation.
Yes, the answers are visible here (that's the point 😅). If you want to test yourself, use one of the practice modes. If you're studying something and just want to browse through the material, use the library.
A little extra SitecoreAI
Finally, there are eight optional Marketplace and AI awareness questions covering some of the broader SitecoreAI platform.
I've kept those separate from the core CMS developer competencies. They're optional, unscored, and don't affect your core practice score or competency distribution.
I expect to expand this further and potentially add other exams in the future 😎
Demo Video
Give it a try
Just like the original XM Cloud version, SitecoreAI Practice Studio is completely free to use.
If you're preparing for the SitecoreAI CMS Developer certification, give it a try. And if you find something wrong, disagree with an answer, hit a broken source link, or think a competency needs better coverage, please let me know.
Closing Thoughts
I truly hope this contribution is useful for the Sitecore developer community.
Special thanks to my friend Jay Patel for helping QA and providing pre-release feedback! 🙏
Happy studying, and happy Sitecoring! ✌️
