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Key Facts: IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Exam
~15 courses
Courses in the series
Coursera
~6 months
Typical completion at 10 hrs/week
Coursera
Beginner
Difficulty level
Coursera
No expiry
Credential validity
IBM / Coursera
Up to 18
ACE college-credit recommendation
Coursera (ACE/ECTS recommended)
100
Free practice questions here
OpenExamPrep
The IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate is a beginner-friendly Coursera series of about 15 courses with graded quizzes, labs, and projects. Assessment is per-course (typically 70-80% to pass each quiz) rather than one final exam, and the credential never expires. Core domains are DevOps culture and CALMS, Agile/Scrum, cloud-native and 12-factor apps, Python and Bash, Docker/Kubernetes/OpenShift, Git/GitHub, CI/CD (Tekton, GitHub Actions, Travis), and TDD/BDD with monitoring and security. Cost is a Coursera subscription, with financial aid available.
Sample IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Practice Questions
Try these sample questions to test your IBM DevOps and Software Engineering exam readiness. Each question includes a detailed explanation. Start the interactive quiz above for the full 100+ question experience with AI tutoring.
1In the CALMS framework used throughout the IBM DevOps curriculum, what do the five letters stand for?
A.Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, Sharing
B.Collaboration, Agile, Lean, Metrics, Scaling
C.Continuous, Automation, Logging, Monitoring, Security
D.Culture, Agile, Lean, Microservices, Serverless
Explanation: CALMS stands for Culture, Automation, Lean, Measurement, and Sharing. It is a framework for assessing an organization's readiness to adopt DevOps, emphasizing that DevOps is as much a cultural shift as a set of tools.
2Which DevOps principle is best described as fostering a culture of shared responsibility between development and operations teams to eliminate silos?
A.A culture of blame to identify who caused an incident
B.Strict separation of duties so developers never touch production
C.A culture of shared responsibility where Dev and Ops jointly own delivery and reliability
D.Outsourcing operations entirely to a managed service provider
Explanation: DevOps culture centers on shared responsibility: developers and operations collaborate across the entire lifecycle, jointly owning building, deploying, and running software. Breaking down silos reduces handoff friction and accelerates delivery.
3Value stream mapping, a core Lean practice in DevOps, is primarily used to accomplish what?
A.Encrypt secrets stored in a CI/CD pipeline
B.Visualize the flow of work to identify bottlenecks and eliminate non-value-adding waste
C.Automatically scale Kubernetes pods based on CPU usage
D.Define the schema of a relational database
Explanation: Value stream mapping visualizes every step from idea to delivery so teams can see where work gets stuck. It is a Lean technique for identifying bottlenecks, redundant steps, and non-value-adding waste, then targeting them for automation or removal.
4What is the main goal of practicing continuous integration (CI) in a DevOps workflow?
A.To deploy every commit directly to production without testing
B.To delay integration until the end of a release cycle to reduce merge frequency
C.To replace version control with a shared network folder
D.To merge developers' code changes into a shared mainline frequently and verify each merge with automated builds and tests
Explanation: Continuous integration means developers merge small changes into a shared branch frequently, with each merge automatically built and tested. This catches integration problems early and keeps the mainline in a working state.
5Which statement correctly distinguishes continuous delivery from continuous deployment?
A.They are identical terms with no difference
B.Continuous deployment requires manual approval, while continuous delivery is fully automated
C.Continuous delivery keeps every change deployable and releases with a manual approval step, while continuous deployment automatically releases every passing change to production
D.Continuous delivery only applies to mobile apps, continuous deployment only to web apps
Explanation: In continuous delivery, every change that passes the pipeline is ready to deploy, but a human triggers the final release. In continuous deployment, that final step is automated, so every passing change goes to production without manual intervention.
6A team adopts a blameless postmortem process after an outage. What is the primary benefit of this approach?
A.It encourages honest disclosure of contributing factors so the team can fix systemic causes and prevent recurrence
B.It identifies which individual to discipline for the failure
C.It avoids documenting incidents to keep records clean
D.It transfers responsibility for reliability solely to the operations team
Explanation: Blameless postmortems focus on understanding the systemic and process factors that led to an incident rather than punishing individuals. When people are not afraid of blame, they share information openly, enabling durable fixes that prevent recurrence.
7Within the CALMS framework, which pillar is most directly concerned with collecting metrics such as deployment frequency, lead time, and mean time to recovery (MTTR)?
A.Culture
B.Automation
C.Sharing
D.Measurement
Explanation: The Measurement pillar of CALMS is about quantifying delivery and reliability so teams can improve. Metrics like deployment frequency, lead time for changes, change failure rate, and MTTR (the DORA metrics) live under Measurement.
8What does the practice of 'shift-left' mean in a DevOps context?
A.Moving deployment servers to a data center on the west coast
B.Performing testing, security, and quality activities earlier in the software development lifecycle rather than at the end
C.Shifting all responsibility to the operations team
D.Reducing the number of automated tests to speed up delivery
Explanation: Shifting left means moving activities like testing and security earlier (to the left on a timeline) in the lifecycle. Finding defects and vulnerabilities sooner is cheaper and faster to fix than discovering them in production.
9Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a key DevOps automation practice. Which statement best describes it?
A.Manually clicking through a cloud console to provision servers
B.Defining and managing infrastructure through machine-readable definition files that can be versioned, reviewed, and applied repeatedly
C.Writing application business logic in a low-level assembly language
D.Storing infrastructure passwords in plain text inside source code
Explanation: Infrastructure as Code manages infrastructure through declarative or imperative definition files (using tools like Terraform, Chef, or Puppet) that are version-controlled. This makes provisioning repeatable, auditable, and consistent across environments.
10A team wants to release a new feature to only 5% of users first, monitor for errors, then gradually roll it out to everyone. Which deployment strategy is this?
A.Big-bang deployment
B.Recreate deployment
C.Cold standby deployment
D.Canary deployment
Explanation: A canary deployment releases the new version to a small subset of users first. If metrics stay healthy, traffic is gradually increased; if problems appear, the rollout is halted, limiting blast radius.
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