PCAM study plan

Map every exam objective in Domain 1 to a one-line note stating what a solution architect must decide and what evidence proves the decision is sound

Draft a requirements-to-architecture traceability table for a fictional multi-tenant SaaS workload, capturing functional, non-functional, compliance, and budget constraints

Compare at least four architecture patterns (layered monolith, service-oriented, event-driven, serverless-first) and record the trade-off that disqualifies each for a regulated, latency-sensitive workload

Produce a decision record template that captures context, options considered, chosen option, rejected alternatives, and reversal cost

Decompose a monolithic business capability into bounded contexts and justify each boundary using data ownership and change cadence rather than team convenience

Design a hybrid and multi-region topology that satisfies stated RTO/RPO targets, and annotate where data residency and egress cost constraints change the design

Translate a set of non-functional requirements into concrete sizing inputs (throughput, concurrency, storage growth, peak-to-average ratio)

Review your week-1 decision pack against Domain 1 objectives and rewrite any record whose justification is a preference rather than a constraint

Design a multi-tier virtual network layout with public and private subnets, explicit route tables, and documented traffic paths for ingress, egress, and east-west service calls

Select and justify connectivity options (site-to-site tunnel, dedicated private circuit, transit hub) for three scenarios differing in bandwidth, latency, and cost sensitivity

Specify DNS strategy, load-balancing tiers, and health-check behavior for a workload spanning two availability zones

Calculate the address space required for a projected growth plan and document a non-overlapping CIDR allocation scheme

Build a threat model for the week-3 network design using a structured method (assets, entry points, trust boundaries, threats, mitigations)

Define an identity architecture covering workforce federation, workload identity, and least-privilege role design with a documented permission boundary strategy

Map data classification tiers to encryption, key management, and retention controls, including key rotation and separation-of-duties requirements

Draft the audit and compliance evidence trail an assessor would request for the fictional workload

Select a storage service per data type (transactional, analytical, object, cache, queue) and justify each choice against access pattern, consistency, and durability requirements

Design a data lifecycle policy covering hot, warm, and archive tiers with transition rules and deletion safeguards

Specify a backup, snapshot, and point-in-time recovery scheme that meets the RPO stated in week 2 and identify where it fails to

Model data flow and lineage from ingestion through transformation to consumption, including ownership at each hop

Classify each application component by migration strategy (retire, retain, rehost, replatform, refactor) and record the business justification and risk for each classification

Sequence a migration wave plan that respects dependency order, cutover windows, and rollback feasibility

Design a resilience model with failure-domain isolation, graceful degradation, and defined blast radius for each tier

Define RTO/RPO per workload tier and verify the design against them, documenting any gap and its accepted risk

Build a cost model for the workload that separates fixed, variable, and data-transfer costs and identifies the three largest optimization levers

Right-size compute and storage recommendations using utilization assumptions, and state the measurement that would confirm or refute each assumption

Define an infrastructure-as-code and policy-as-code baseline with drift detection, change approval, and environment promotion rules

Specify the observability stack: which metrics, logs, and traces answer which operational question, and what alert thresholds trigger action

Consolidate all prior deliverables into a single architecture review package and resolve every contradiction between documents

Rehearse timed scenario responses that require selecting among competing designs and defending the choice on constraint grounds

Audit your weak objectives list and close the three lowest-confidence areas with targeted review and written summaries

Produce a personal exam-day decision checklist covering requirement triage, elimination strategy, and time allocation