Plat-UX-102 Salesforce Certified Platform Strategy Designer Exam Topics and Questions

Value Design carries the heaviest load in this exam and sets the tone for everything that follows. You're working at the altitude where business objectives meet user problems, where the challenge statement is framed, and where you decide what success looks like before anyone builds anything.

– Challenge statements and success metrics

The first sub-topic asks you to pair a business objective with a user problem and frame the altitude and scope of a design project. The challenge statement is the hinge: too narrow and you solve the wrong thing, too broad and you solve nothing. Once you've framed the challenge, you need to identify the metrics and signals that will define success. The exam will give you a scenario and expect you to distinguish between vanity metrics and the ones that actually tell you whether the strategy is working. This is not about dashboards or reporting tools. It's about knowing what to measure before you commit resources, and why that measurement matters to both the business and the user.

– Organizational and external context

Internal dynamics shape what's possible. The third sub-topic asks you to evaluate how the organization's structure, culture, or politics might impact your recommendation on the right approach. A technically sound strategy can fail if it runs against the grain of how decisions are made or where power sits. External context matters just as much. The fourth sub-topic covers how market shifts, regulatory changes, competitive pressure, or emerging technology might influence the organization's strategy. You need to read the scenario for signals that an external factor is in play and adjust your recommendation accordingly. The exam will test whether you can spot the difference between a problem that needs internal alignment and one that needs a pivot in response to the world outside.

– Defending direction and advocating for values

The fifth sub-topic asks you to defend the rationale for strategic directions, including how they satisfy business and user needs and what the future implications are. This is about making a case that holds up under scrutiny, not just presenting options. The sixth sub-topic brings ethics and values into the frame. You're expected to advocate for both users and the organization when those interests are in tension. The exam will present scenarios where a commercially attractive path has user-hostile consequences, or where user preferences conflict with the organization's stated values. Your job is to name the trade-off and argue for the choice that protects both sides over the long term.

How Value Design is tested

At 32 percent, Value Design questions appear more than once every three items. Expect scenario-based items that describe an organization, a user problem, and a business goal, then ask you to select the challenge statement that frames the project correctly or the metric that will actually measure success. The distractors are plausible but miss the point: they solve a symptom instead of the root cause, or they measure activity instead of outcome. You lose marks when you pick the option that sounds strategic but doesn't connect business need to user need, or when you ignore the organizational or external context that the scenario has embedded in the setup. The exam will also test your ability to defend a direction by asking which rationale is most compelling, or to advocate for ethics by asking which recommendation protects both user and organizational interests. The weight means you cannot afford to guess through this topic. If you're weak on framing challenge statements or distinguishing good metrics from bad ones, that weakness will cost you the exam.

Tools and Artifacts shifts the focus from framing the problem to choosing the methods and criteria that move you from strategy to execution. This topic has three sub-topics, and together they cover the mechanics of turning a strategic direction into something tangible. The first asks you to connect user needs to high-level Salesforce capabilities. You're not designing the solution, but you need to know which parts of the platform can deliver on the user need the challenge statement has identified. The second sub-topic asks you to determine the criteria for feasibility, desirability, and viability within a user experience. Feasibility is whether you can build it, desirability is whether users will adopt it, and viability is whether the business can sustain it. The exam will give you a scenario and ask which criterion is at risk or which one should take priority. The third sub-topic covers co-creation methods. You need to identify the best methods to employ with customers and stakeholders, and the exam will test whether you can match the method to the audience and the stage of the project. A workshop that works for executive alignment will not work for front-line user research, and the exam expects you to know the difference.

How Tools and Artifacts is tested

At 23 percent, this topic appears roughly once every four or five items. Questions will describe a user need and ask which Salesforce capability addresses it, or present a scenario and ask which of the three criteria (feasibility, desirability, viability) is most at risk. The distractors will offer capabilities that are real but don't match the need, or they'll confuse the criteria by suggesting that a desirability problem is actually a feasibility one. You lose marks when you pick the tool or method that sounds sophisticated but doesn't fit the context, or when you misread the scenario and solve for the wrong constraint. Co-creation questions will describe an audience and a goal, then ask which method is most appropriate. The wrong answers will be methods that are valid in general but wrong for this stakeholder group or this stage of the project. The weight is significant but not overwhelming. If you're comfortable with the Salesforce platform's high-level capabilities and you can distinguish feasibility from viability, you'll pick up most of these marks.

Intangible Deliverables is the second-heaviest topic and it's where the exam tests your ability to create alignment, manage relationships, and communicate vision. You're working with people, not artifacts, and the skills here are about navigating internal dynamics and presenting ideas in ways that land with different audiences.

– Alignment and relationships

The first sub-topic asks you to craft a strategy to create alignment when the scenario describes stakeholders with competing priorities or different understandings of the problem. Alignment is not consensus. It's getting everyone to commit to the same direction even when they don't all agree on the details. The exam will test whether you can identify the right strategy for the situation: whether you need a workshop, a one-on-one conversation, a pilot, or something else. The second sub-topic covers key relationships. As internal dynamics evolve, you need to identify the people whose buy-in or expertise is essential to solving the challenge statement. The exam will present a scenario where the obvious stakeholder is not the one who holds the key to progress, and you need to spot the relationship that actually matters.

– Presentation and collaboration

The third sub-topic asks you to identify the best presentation techniques for communicating a vision to a given audience. Executives need a different presentation than developers, and users need a different one again. The exam will describe the audience and ask which technique is most effective. The wrong answers will be techniques that work in general but miss the audience's priorities or level of detail. The fourth sub-topic covers tools for productive cross-discipline collaboration. You're working with people who think differently, use different language, and care about different things. The exam will test whether you can identify the tool or technique that helps a designer, a developer, and a business analyst work together without talking past each other.

How Intangible Deliverables is tested

At 26 percent, this topic appears as often as Value Design and carries almost as much weight. Questions will describe a scenario with misaligned stakeholders and ask which strategy will create alignment, or they'll describe evolving dynamics and ask which relationship you need to prioritize. The distractors will offer strategies that sound reasonable but don't address the root cause of the misalignment, or they'll point you toward the wrong stakeholder. Presentation questions will describe an audience and ask which technique is most appropriate. The wrong answers will be techniques that are too detailed, too high-level, or aimed at the wrong concern. Collaboration questions will describe a team with different disciplines and ask which tool will help them work together. You lose marks when you pick the option that solves a different problem or when you misread the audience's needs. The weight means you need to be confident in your ability to read the scenario for the real obstacle, whether it's alignment, relationships, presentation, or collaboration.

Leveraging Adjacent Roles/Skills closes the exam with the handoff from vision to delivery. You're no longer just framing the problem or creating alignment. You're building the roadmap, identifying the capabilities needed to execute, and facilitating collaboration across the design and build team.

– Roadmap and capability

The first sub-topic asks you to create a roadmap for implementation that is feasible and holds true to the vision in every iteration. The exam will test whether you can sequence the work so that each release delivers value without compromising the long-term direction. The wrong answers will be roadmaps that are technically sound but lose the vision, or that protect the vision but can't be delivered. The second sub-topic asks you to determine the technical and business capabilities that underpin delivery of vision to solution. You need to know which capabilities are essential and which are nice to have, and the exam will test whether you can spot the difference when the scenario describes constraints on time, budget, or skills.

– Collaboration and skill infusion

The third sub-topic asks you to facilitate productive collaboration when the scenario describes disparate business and technical deliverables within a design or build team. You're looking for the move that gets everyone working toward the same outcome instead of optimizing their own piece in isolation. The fourth sub-topic covers the knowledge and skill infusions needed in the creation of a vision. The exam will describe a project and ask which expertise is missing or which skill needs to be brought in to make the vision credible. The wrong answers will be skills that sound relevant but don't address the gap the scenario has described.

How Leveraging Adjacent Roles/Skills is tested

At 19 percent, this is the lightest topic but still accounts for roughly one item in five. Questions will describe a vision and ask which roadmap delivers it without losing feasibility, or they'll describe a set of constraints and ask which capabilities are essential. The distractors will offer roadmaps that are realistic but drift from the vision, or capabilities that are desirable but not critical. Collaboration questions will describe a team with misaligned deliverables and ask which facilitation move is most effective. Skill infusion questions will describe a project and ask which expertise is missing. You lose marks when you pick the option that sounds strategic but doesn't address the specific gap or constraint the scenario has identified. The weight is the lowest of the four topics, but the content is still dense and the scenarios require careful reading. If you're weak on roadmap sequencing or identifying technical versus business capabilities, those gaps will cost you marks you can't afford to lose.