The February 2024 end-of-life for Atlassian Server products accelerated enterprise migration to Jira Cloud, creating a sharp demand for professionals whose skills are validated specifically in cloud environments. With 80% of Fortune 500 companies running Atlassian products and cloud-native features — including native automation rules and the company-managed versus team-managed project distinction — becoming standard practice, the ACP-620 certifies a skill set that is directly relevant to enterprise Jira deployments in 2026.
This study guide covers the full ACP-620 exam structure, a detailed breakdown of all five domains by weighting, the board configuration and project management concepts most heavily tested, how JQL and automation rules feature across the exam, and a preparation strategy built around the exam’s practical, scenario-based format.
In Brief
- Exam code: ACP-620
- Full name: Atlassian Certified Professional: Managing Jira Projects for Cloud
- Questions: 70 multiple-choice (single-answer, multiple-answer, scenario-based)
- Duration: 180 minutes
- Passing score: 60%
- Cost: $249 USD
What Does the ACP-620 Exam Test, and Is It Right for You?
The ACP-620 is the Atlassian Certified Professional exam for professionals who configure and manage Jira Cloud projects for Scrum and Kanban teams. It tests practical Jira Cloud administration skills — not theoretical knowledge — across five domains. Atlassian recommends at least six months of hands-on Jira Software Cloud experience before you sit the exam. It is not an entry-level credential.
Three professional profiles benefit most from pursuing the ACP-620. Jira project administrators who configure boards, manage permissions, and handle reporting for their teams gain formal validation of skills they already apply daily. Project managers who work heavily in Jira Cloud and want to demonstrate platform expertise — particularly in organisations where Jira is the central workflow tool — use the ACP-620 to distinguish themselves from non-certified peers. IT professionals expanding from system administration into project management tooling round out the typical candidate pool.
The ACP-620 is distinct from the Jira Administration exam (ACP-120), which covers site-level and instance-wide administration. The ACP-620 focuses on project-level configuration: boards, project settings, permissions scoped within a project, and reporting tied to a team’s workflow. If your role involves setting up and maintaining Jira projects for specific teams — rather than administering the full Jira instance — the ACP-620 is the more directly relevant credential.
“Certifications show employers and peers that you really know your stuff — experience is the best way to get confident with Atlassian products.”
The exam is not appropriate for professionals with no Jira experience approaching the platform for the first time. Atlassian designs its ACP exams to reward practitioners who have worked through real project configurations, debugged board issues, and interpreted agile reports in live environments — not candidates who have only read documentation.
How Is the ACP-620 Structured Across Its Five Exam Domains?
The ACP-620 exam consists of 70 scenario-based questions with a 180-minute time limit, a passing threshold of 60%, and a registration cost of $249 USD. Questions are multiple-choice in format, including single-answer, multiple-answer (marked “Choose two” or “Choose three”), and scenario-driven selections. All questions test applied knowledge of Jira Cloud rather than recalled definitions. The exam is delivered through Certmetrics.
The exam is organised across five domains, each weighted to reflect its importance in real-world Jira Cloud project administration:
| Domain | Weighting | Approximate Questions |
|---|---|---|
| Board Configuration | 29% | ~20 |
| Managing Projects | 25% | ~18 |
| Reporting | 19% | ~13 |
| Automation | 14% | ~10 |
| Project Creation | 13% | ~9 |
Board Configuration and Managing Projects together account for 54% of the exam — more than half the questions focus on how projects are set up and maintained, not on analysis or reporting. Candidates who invest disproportionate study time in Reporting or Automation at the expense of board and project management configuration will underperform in the two largest weighted sections.
The scenario-based format means questions typically present a specific team problem — a misconfigured board filter, a permission issue preventing a user from transitioning issues, a sprint report showing unexpected data — and ask which single action resolves it. Familiarity with Jira Cloud’s interface and real configuration decisions is not optional; it underpins every question on the exam.
The official exam blueprint and free on-demand preparation modules are available through the Managing Jira Projects certification page on the Atlassian Community Learning portal.
Why Does Board Configuration Carry the Heaviest Weight in the ACP-620?
Board Configuration is the most heavily weighted domain in the ACP-620, accounting for 29% of the exam — roughly 20 of 70 questions. The domain covers Scrum and Kanban board setup, cross-project boards, column configuration, sub-filters, swimlane rules, card layout customisation, and troubleshooting of misconfigured boards in Jira Cloud.
Board configuration carries the heaviest weighting because it is the highest-value administration area for Jira project teams. When a board is correctly configured, sprint planning runs efficiently, blocked issues surface visibly, and reporting data is accurate. When it is misconfigured — wrong board filter, broken column mapping, unexpected swimlane behaviour — the team’s workflow degrades directly and immediately. Atlassian weights this domain at 29% because configuring boards correctly is the most consequential day-to-day responsibility of a Jira project administrator.
The ACP-620 tests board configuration at a depth that extends well beyond the Jira UI. Candidates must understand:
- Board filters: How the board query determines which issues appear, and how to diagnose a filter that incorrectly includes or excludes issues
- Sub-filters: How quick filter settings stack on top of the board’s main filter to narrow visible issues for specific team members
- Column configuration: Mapping workflow statuses to board columns across different issue types, and troubleshooting columns that show zero issues unexpectedly
- Swimlanes: Configuring swimlanes by epic, assignee, query, or story; understanding how swimlane configuration affects sprint report output
- Cross-project boards: Setting up Scrum or Kanban boards that aggregate issues from multiple Jira projects using a filter query — and understanding why this is only available for company-managed projects
- Card layouts: Displaying additional issue fields on board cards and understanding which layout options are available per project type
Cross-project board configuration is particularly consequential in the exam. Because company-managed projects support filter-based board queries that team-managed projects do not, the Board Configuration domain intersects directly with the company-managed versus team-managed distinction — a concept examined separately in the next section.
For professionals exploring the broader Jira credentialing landscape, a review of Jira certification paths provides useful context on how the ACP-620 fits within the full Atlassian programme.
Company-Managed vs Team-Managed Projects: A Critical ACP-620 Distinction
Company-managed and team-managed projects are the two distinct project types in Jira Cloud, and the difference between them appears throughout multiple ACP-620 exam domains. Company-managed projects support full scheme-based customisation — workflow schemes, permission schemes, issue type schemes, and field configurations. Team-managed projects offer simplified project-level controls with limited cross-project customisation.
This distinction is not a peripheral topic in the ACP-620 — it runs through Project Creation, Board Configuration, Managing Projects, and Automation. A project administrator who conflates the two types, or who understands only one, will encounter questions in three or four separate domains where the correct answer depends entirely on which project type the scenario describes.
| Capability | Company-Managed | Team-Managed |
|---|---|---|
| Workflow customisation | Full scheme-based control | Project-level only |
| Permission schemes | Shared global schemes | Project-level roles only |
| Issue type schemes | Shared, configurable | Fixed set, limited customisation |
| Cross-project boards | Supported via filter query | Not supported |
| Field configurations | Global field config schemes | Project-level only |
| Best for | Complex enterprise projects needing consistent schemas | Autonomous teams needing fast, simple setup |
Company-managed projects are the default choice for organisations that need consistent workflows across multiple teams, standardised permission structures, and the ability to build cross-project boards. The trade-off is administrative overhead: changes to a shared scheme affect every project that uses it simultaneously, which requires careful governance.
Team-managed projects suit autonomous teams that prioritise speed and flexibility over cross-project consistency. Project administrators configure settings directly within the project — no global administration access required. The limitation is that team-managed projects cannot be consolidated onto cross-project boards, cannot participate in global automation rules, and have no access to shared permission or workflow schemes.
ACP-620 questions on this topic typically present a scenario describing what a team needs — cross-project visibility, a specific custom workflow, shared roles, or a simplified admin model — and ask which project type satisfies the requirement and how to configure it. Knowing when Atlassian recommends each type, not just what features each provides, is the level of understanding that reaches a 60% pass rate.
How Do Automation Rules and JQL Reporting Factor into the ACP-620 Exam?
Automation and Reporting together account for 33% of the ACP-620 exam — approximately 23 of 70 questions — making these two domains collectively as impactful as board configuration. The Automation domain covers native Jira Cloud automation rules, workflow automation, bulk changes, and troubleshooting failed rules. The Reporting domain tests JQL (Jira Query Language), dashboard configuration, and interpretation of agile reports.
Automation in the ACP-620
Jira Cloud’s native automation engine operates on an if-then rule structure: a trigger initiates the rule, conditions filter which issues it applies to, and actions execute the change. The ACP-620 tests candidates on building automation rules for common project tasks — auto-transitioning issues when all sub-tasks complete, notifying assignees when issues are blocked, and synchronising field values across linked issues.
Bulk changes — modifying multiple issues simultaneously — are tested alongside automation rules, including the practical difference between using automation versus Jira’s native bulk change tool for a given scenario. Troubleshooting is a recurring exam theme: when a rule fires for the wrong issues or fails to trigger at all, candidates must identify whether the problem lies in the trigger scope, the condition logic, or the action configuration.
JQL and Reporting in the ACP-620
JQL is Jira’s query language for filtering issues across the platform and drives boards, dashboards, and subscription reports. The ACP-620 tests JQL syntax and a core set of functions: currentUser(), membersOf(), sprint in openSprints(), and date-relative functions such as startOfWeek() and endOfMonth(). Candidates must construct or correct JQL statements that produce a specific filtering result.
Dashboard configuration covers adding and arranging gadgets — burndown charts, sprint reports, velocity charts, pie charts, and two-dimensional filter statistics — and configuring their scope correctly. Agile report interpretation is also tested: candidates must explain why a burndown chart shows an unexpected pattern, or why a velocity chart reflects irregular sprint completion, based on the sprint data described in the question.
Practising with questions that mirror this scenario format — across all five domains — before sitting the exam is one of the most effective preparation steps. An ACP-620 practice exam from CertFun provides 315+ questions aligned to the full exam blueprint, including automation and JQL scenarios at the same complexity level as the live test.
Why Is the ACP-620 Especially Valuable After Atlassian’s Server-to-Cloud Transition?
The ACP-620 certifies cloud-specific Jira skills at a moment when cloud expertise is at peak enterprise demand. Atlassian ended support for its Server product line in February 2024, accelerating enterprise migration to Jira Cloud and creating a clear market distinction between practitioners whose skills are validated in cloud environments and those whose experience remains tied to Server or Data Center deployments.
The scale of Atlassian’s enterprise footprint makes this certification increasingly consequential. 80% of Fortune 500 companies are Atlassian customers, and Atlassian Cloud revenue grew 26% year-over-year as of Q2 FY26. As organisations complete their cloud migrations, demand for project administrators who can configure and manage cloud-native Jira projects — rather than simply reproducing Server administration habits in a Cloud environment — has intensified significantly.
The ACP-620 is also the only Atlassian certification that specifically validates cloud project management skills at the team and project level. Its company-managed versus team-managed distinction, native automation rules, and cloud-specific reporting capabilities do not map directly to Server or Data Center equivalents. Candidates who earned their Jira experience on Server must actively relearn several configuration patterns to perform well on this exam.
The market impact on compensation is measurable. Jira Administrators in the United States earn between $116,283 and $156,213 annually, and Atlassian-certified professionals consistently report salary premiums of 15–25% over uncertified peers. For a broader view of the Atlassian credential ecosystem, a comprehensive Atlassian certification overview explains how the ACP-620 connects to adjacent credentials including ACP-120 (Jira Administration) and the full Atlassian Certified Professional programme.
What Preparation Strategy Works Best for the ACP-620?
An effective ACP-620 preparation strategy combines Atlassian University’s free training, at least six months of hands-on Jira Cloud experience, domain-weighted study time, and practice questions that reflect the exam’s scenario-based format. Preparation that relies solely on reading documentation or memorising feature lists will not produce a passing score — the ACP-620’s question design specifically prevents it.
“You cannot memorize your way to a passing grade on any of their exams.”
A structured preparation approach built around the ACP-620’s five domains:
- Download and review the official exam topics document: Atlassian publishes a detailed exam blueprint listing every topic within each domain. This document drives every question on the exam. Access it from the official ACP-620 certification page and use it to identify knowledge gaps before planning study sessions.
- Complete Atlassian University free training: Atlassian offers free on-demand modules through Atlassian University covering core ACP-620 topics. These modules reflect current Jira Cloud features including updates through 2025 and 2026.
- Build hands-on experience on a real Jira Cloud instance: Create a free Atlassian account and work through each domain area practically. Configure a Scrum board and a Kanban board from scratch. Build a cross-project board using a custom filter query. Set up an automation rule, trigger it intentionally, then break a condition and troubleshoot the failure. Write JQL queries that replicate board filter and dashboard gadget logic.
- Allocate study time proportionally to domain weight: Spend approximately 29% of structured study sessions on Board Configuration, 25% on Managing Projects, 19% on Reporting, 14% on Automation, and 13% on Project Creation. This mirrors the exam’s emphasis and directs preparation time toward the questions most concentrated on the live exam.
- Practice with scenario-based questions: When working through practice questions, read each carefully for the project type specified (company-managed or team-managed), the user role involved, and the precise problem or requirement described. Scenario questions reward precision and applied judgment, not general awareness.
- Engage with the Atlassian Community: The Training and Certification group on the Atlassian Community features discussions from ACP-620 candidates and certified professionals who regularly share preparation insights, including topic areas that appear more heavily than their stated weighting suggests.
Jimmy Seddon, an Atlassian Community Champion, reinforces the experience-first approach: “Atlassian expects that you have used the product and are taking the certification after being familiar with the features before taking an exam.” Familiarity built through active Jira Cloud project administration — not passive study — is the foundation that makes all other preparation effective.
Frequently Asked Questions About the ACP-620 Exam
What is the ACP-620 exam?
The ACP-620 is the Atlassian Certified Professional exam for Managing Jira Projects for Cloud. It validates the skills of Jira project administrators who configure and manage Scrum and Kanban projects in Jira Cloud environments, covering five domains: Board Configuration (29%), Managing Projects (25%), Reporting (19%), Automation (14%), and Project Creation (13%).
How many questions does the ACP-620 have?
The ACP-620 contains 70 questions. Questions are multiple-choice in format, including single-answer, multiple-answer (Choose two or Choose three), and scenario-based selections. All questions test applied knowledge of Jira Cloud configuration rather than theoretical definitions, reflecting how real Jira administrators solve problems on the job.
What is the passing score for the ACP-620?
The passing score for the ACP-620 is 60%. With 70 questions on the exam, candidates need to answer approximately 42 or more questions correctly to pass. Atlassian does not publish the exact scoring breakdown at the question level, but the 60% threshold applies uniformly across the full exam rather than per domain.
How much does the ACP-620 exam cost?
The ACP-620 exam costs $249 USD. Registration is managed through Certmetrics, the exam delivery platform used by Atlassian. Some Atlassian training partners include exam vouchers with formal course enrolment, but publicly available discount channels are limited.
What is the difference between company-managed and team-managed projects in Jira Cloud?
Company-managed projects provide full scheme-based customisation — workflow schemes, permission schemes, shared issue type schemes, and field configuration schemes — and support cross-project boards. Team-managed projects use project-level settings only, with simplified configuration and no access to shared schemes or cross-project board functionality. This distinction appears across multiple ACP-620 exam domains and is one of the most important concepts to understand thoroughly before sitting the exam.
Which domain has the highest weighting in the ACP-620?
Board Configuration is the highest-weighted domain at 29%, accounting for approximately 20 of the 70 exam questions. It covers Scrum and Kanban board setup, filter configuration, column mapping, swimlane rules, cross-project board creation, and board troubleshooting. Candidates should allocate the most study time to this domain relative to the others.
Is prior Jira experience required before taking the ACP-620?
No formal prerequisites are required to register for the ACP-620, but Atlassian recommends at least six months of hands-on Jira Software Cloud experience before attempting it. The scenario-based question format is specifically designed so that candidates without real-world Jira Cloud project administration experience will struggle to consistently reach the 60% passing threshold.
How long should I study for the ACP-620?
Preparation time varies by existing Jira Cloud experience. Candidates with six or more months of active Jira Cloud project administration typically need four to eight weeks of targeted study. Those newer to the cloud platform should plan eight to twelve weeks, prioritising hands-on configuration practice across each domain alongside formal study materials from Atlassian University.
Is the ACP-620 valid for Jira Data Center or Jira Server?
No. The ACP-620 is specific to Jira Cloud. Exam content — including the company-managed versus team-managed project distinction, native cloud automation rules, and cloud-specific reporting features — reflects the Jira Cloud platform exclusively. Atlassian ended Server support in February 2024, and the ACP-620 does not include Server or Data Center configuration topics.
What is the retake policy for the ACP-620 if I fail?
Atlassian requires candidates to wait a minimum period before reattempting the ACP-620 after a failed attempt. Atlassian periodically updates its exam administration policies alongside certification programme changes, so candidates should review the current retake terms on the Atlassian certification portal at the time of registration rather than relying on third-party descriptions of the policy.
Start Your ACP-620 Journey
The ACP-620 is a practical, scenario-driven certification that rewards Jira Cloud project administrators who have invested time configuring boards, managing permissions, building automation rules, and interpreting agile reports in real environments. Its five domains reflect the actual administrative scope of a Jira project administrator’s role — not a theoretical survey of platform features.
Begin by downloading the official ACP-620 exam topics document and assessing your current knowledge against each domain’s weighting. Spend the most structured preparation time on Board Configuration and Managing Projects, where 54% of the exam is concentrated. Build hands-on experience in a real Jira Cloud instance, work through scenario-based practice questions, and engage with the Atlassian community’s Training and Certification group for peer insight. The 60% passing threshold is consistently achievable for practitioners who prepare with genuine Jira Cloud experience and a domain-weighted study plan.
