── The plan was perfect. Until IPA said "simultaneous sittings not allowed."

About this article With IPA's advanced-level exams moving to CBT format from FY2026, I hatched a plan to sit both the ST (IT Strategist) and SA (Systems Architect) exams at the same time using generative AI — and I even built a dedicated study app to go with it. This is that story.

The short version: IPA shut down the simultaneous-sitting idea. And on top of that, the ST and SA exam categories themselves are being abolished from FY2027. Even so, the study methodology and app concept that emerged along the way turned out to be genuinely useful for anyone tackling essay-based exams under the new system.

This article is in three parts.

[Part 1] Why I came up with the ST × SA simultaneous-sitting idea

[Part 2] The full picture of the "one project, reused everywhere" strategy built with generative AI

[Part 3] The dedicated app "STSA Drill," and what comes next after being blocked twice over

The study workflow explained in this article can be put into practice directly with the iPad app "STSA Drill" that I developed. Everything here can also be done with just paper and Word if you don't have the app.

[Part 1] Why I came up with the ST × SA simultaneous-sitting idea

The "revolution" that CBT brings

In August 2025, IPA made a bombshell announcement.

The Applied Information Technology Engineer Exam and the advanced-level exams would be moving to CBT format from FY2026. Exams that had always been held on one specific Sunday in spring and one specific Sunday in autumn would now let candidates choose their own date and time within a set window. You could even sit Section A and Section B on different days.

The moment I saw that announcement, a thought popped into my head.

"If you can spread the days out… could you sit both ST and SA?"

Both ST and SA belong to the first-half sitting (equivalent to the traditional spring session). Up until now, they were held on the same Sunday, so you could physically only pick one. If CBT turned the exam date into a "window," you could theoretically book separate days within the first-half window and sit both — that was my thinking.

Bouncing ideas off generative AI to flesh out the plan

I took this idea and started batting it back and forth with a generative AI. From there, questions kept getting dug into one after another: "Why is the ST × SA combination the ultimate pairing?", "Is it okay to use the same project for both?", "What order should you sit them in?"

Why ST × SA is the "ultimate combination"

Among the advanced-level exams, five categories require an essay (Afternoon II): ST, SA, PM, SM, and AU. Of these, ST and SA are like siblings — ST handles the "upstream" side of a project and SA handles the "downstream" side.

The biggest hurdle in essay exams is "what to write about (your material)." It's not technical knowledge.

ST essay: You write about "why make this investment" and "how you explained it to senior management"
SA essay: You write about "how you designed it" and "why you chose this technology"

All you have to do is change the camera angle on the same project, and you can cover both exams.

Is it really okay to reuse the same project?

Short answer: yes. IPA's graders for ST and SA don't cross-reference each other's answer sheets. Each exam is evaluated entirely on its own.

In the real world, it's not unusual for the person who drew up the plan to also serve as the lead designer. As long as you write the "role" section at the start of each essay appropriately, the consistency holds up fine.

Generative AI accelerates the "perspective switch"

Traditional exam-prep textbooks used to say "prepare three outlines (draft essay structures)." But with generative AI, you can flip that logic on its head.

Instead of "three thin outlines," create "one extremely high-resolution outline" and apply it to every possible topic.

Ask the AI "If this past-exam topic came up, how would I write about my project?" and it instantly suggests how to rearrange your episodes. Squeezing every last drop out of one project produces essays that can withstand a grader's deep scrutiny.

The "5-step plan" that emerged from conversations with generative AI

After going back and forth with the AI, the shape of a study plan started to come into focus.

Step 1: Use generative AI to build "your project"
Step 2: Use generative AI to build "your ultimate prompt set"
Step 3: Convert Afternoon I past questions into "material for Afternoon II"
Step 4: Use the outline to drill Afternoon II repeatedly
Step 5: Sit the exams on separate days, taking advantage of CBT flexibility

The heart of this plan is Step 3.

The Afternoon I (short-answer) question text is IPA's officially crafted "condensed ideal project." The trick is to reverse-import it as a "source of material for Afternoon II (essays)." If you train yourself to read Afternoon I case studies and ask "how would I develop this in my own essay?", you build the storytelling skills needed for essays — and as a bonus, you're also studying for Afternoon I at the same time. Two birds, one stone.

[Part 2] The full picture of the "one project, reused everywhere" strategy built with generative AI

The "perspective switch" is the ultimate skill

When reusing one project across ST and SA, the single most important skill is the "perspective switch."

The same fact reads completely differently depending on whether you're writing for ST or SA. For example —

Fact: "The customer master was being managed in triplicate across three separate systems."

Written from the ST (management) perspective: "Duplicate proposals to the same customer were occurring at an average of 28 cases per month, generating an opportunity loss of approximately ¥200 million per year. I presented this situation to senior management as 'the cost of doing nothing,' which helped drive the investment decision for the new infrastructure."
Written from the SA (technical) perspective: "Variations in corporate name formatting had produced approximately 1,200 duplicate records, pushing the duplication rate to 15%. I reduced the duplication rate to 0.8% by combining deterministic matching via corporate registration numbers with probabilistic matching using a Jaro-Winkler distance threshold of 0.92."

ST speaks in monetary terms (¥200 million in opportunity loss); SA speaks in technical specifications (Jaro-Winkler distance 0.92). Same fact, completely different register.

How to do the "Perspective Switch Drill"

The "Perspective Switch Drill" is designed to make this kind of writing-for-different-audiences second nature.

Pick one fact, set a 3-minute timer, and write the ST version. Then another 3 minutes for the SA version. Compare against a model answer. Repeat for 10 questions.

What's interesting is that doing this drill makes your own habits visible. People with a technical background tend to drift into design talk even in an ST essay; people with a planning background tend to fall back on "investment decisions" even in an SA essay.

The "5-piece set" you build with generative AI

The plan produces five deliverables in total. All of them are created through dialogue with generative AI.

#	Deliverable	What it's used for
1	Project memory prompt	Feeds the AI your project details at the start of each session
2	ST general-purpose outline template	A guide for assembling an ST essay outline by topic
3	SA general-purpose outline template	A guide for assembling an SA essay outline by topic
4	Essay overview sheet	Advance prep for the summary section filled in at the start of the real exam
5	Perspective Switch Drill	Training to flip instantly between the ST and SA mindsets

The outline templates are built around a "5-section structure."

Common profile (company overview, investment scale, etc.)
Episode list (a pool of reusable material, each with an ID)
Topic-by-topic outline assembly guide (a mapping of topic × question × episode)
Common checklist (required elements for sub-questions A, B, and C)
Keyword list (management terminology for ST; technical terminology for SA)

With this template, no matter what topic comes up, you can build an outline in three steps: look at the topic guide → pick your episodes → write.

The 8 evaluation criteria in the sparring prompt

When you ask generative AI to critique an essay with a vague "what do you think?", you only get surface-level feedback.

So I locked in 8 evaluation criteria that reproduce the grader's perspective.

[Structure] (1) Logical consistency across sub-questions (2) Word-count balance (3) Coverage of all stated requirements

[Content] (4) Specificity (numbers, proper nouns) (5) Agency ("I did ~") (6) Originality of the approach (7) Objectivity of the evaluation

[Perspective] (8) For ST: how concretely you explained things to senior management / For SA: the rationale behind technical design decisions and comparison of alternatives

Include these 8 criteria in your prompt and you'll get consistently high-quality feedback every time.

The essay overview sheet also needs to be written differently

Something that's surprisingly easy to overlook is the "essay overview sheet" filled in at the very beginning of the essay.

Field	ST version	SA version	Why they differ
① Title	"Formulation of ~ IT Strategy"	"Design of ~ Infrastructure"	Signals the level of perspective
⑧ Total person-months	150 person-months (all phases)	80 person-months (Phase 1 only)	ST = whole picture; SA = design scope only
⑨ Total cost	¥350 million (all phases)	¥150 million (Phase 1 only)	Same as above
⑫ Responsibilities	Business strategy formulation, IS strategy formulation	Requirements definition, design & development	Makes the difference in roles explicit

Even with the same project, how you define the scope tells the grader "this person is genuinely writing from an ST perspective (or an SA perspective)."

[Part 3] The dedicated app "STSA Drill," and what comes next after being blocked twice over

The plan grew into app development

Once the study plan had taken shape, my next thought was: "Could this become an app?"

In particular, the following tasks are quietly tedious to do by hand every time.

Finding Afternoon I questions that pair well with a given Afternoon II question
Manually assembling the sparring prompt each time
Manually counting the word count of an essay
Managing ST and SA answers in separate files

So I wrote up the requirements for an iPad-exclusive study app called "STSA Drill." The main features are as follows.

Afternoon I × Afternoon II matching: Select an Afternoon II question and the app automatically suggests "well-matched Afternoon I questions" based on a pre-defined matching table.

Split-screen editor: The iPad screen splits left/right (or top/bottom) to show the question on one side and your draft on the other. You can read and write at the same time.

Real-time word count: For each sub-question (A, B, C), the app shows how close you are to the target word-count range, color-coded in three colors.

Auto-generated sparring prompt: One tap generates a prompt with the exam category, your answer text, and all 8 evaluation criteria already embedded. Just copy to clipboard and paste into your external LLM of choice.

Outline practice mode: Choose a topic and the app presents a paired ST and SA past question, letting you practice the same topic back-to-back in ST → SA order.

Version management: Store up to 5 versions of your answer for a single question. Compare your first attempt with your third and actually feel yourself improving.

First blow: "Simultaneous sittings not allowed"

On February 24, 2026 — just as I'd finished writing up the app requirements — IPA made an official announcement.

"For both the first-half and second-half sittings, candidates will be permitted to register only once. Multiple exam categories or multiple registrations within the same first-half or second-half sitting will not be permitted."

CBT had given candidates more freedom over their exam date, but only one category per window was allowed. My plan to sit both ST and SA in the same first-half window was dead.

And both ST and SA are first-half exams. There was no escape route of "ST in the first half, SA in the second half" either — the second-half lineup includes PM, DB, ES, and AU, but not ST or SA.

In other words, it is physically impossible to pass both ST and SA in FY2026.

Second blow: "The ST and SA categories are being abolished"

Then came the follow-up punch. On March 31, 2026, IPA announced a sweeping overhaul of the exam system.

From FY2027, the current advanced-level exams (ST, SA, PM, SM, AU, DB, NW, ES) will be discontinued and consolidated into a new framework called the "Professional Digital Skills Examination."

The new system has three categories.

Management domain: Managing the process of digital utilization in organizations and business
Data & AI domain: Building the infrastructure and data foundations that support data-driven activities
Systems domain: Requirements definition, architecture design, development, and operation of systems

ST and SA will presumably be absorbed into the "Management domain" and "Systems domain" respectively, but FY2026 is the last year you can sit the current "IT Strategist Exam" and "Systems Architect Exam."

In other words, passing both ST and SA simultaneously was a phantom plan — one that could never have been realized, past or future.

Even so, "the strategy isn't dead"

I won't pretend I wasn't disappointed. But thinking about it calmly, the methodology built through this plan will outlive any change in the rules.

The "perspective switch" is still a weapon in the new system

The new "Professional Digital Skills Examination" will still have separate Management and Systems domain categories. If you want to pass both, the strategy of talking about the same project from a "management perspective" and a "systems perspective" works just as well.

The Perspective Switch Drill, the outline templates, the 8-criteria sparring prompt — all of these are fundamentally "training to talk about the same facts from different vantage points," and that essence doesn't change just because the exam names do.

It's also effective for people sitting just one category in FY2026

Even without the simultaneous-sitting premise, the methodology established through this plan is just as useful for someone sitting a single exam category.

"Squeeze one project dry" strategy: Instead of preparing three outlines, drill one to its absolute limit
"Afternoon I → Afternoon II reverse-import" strategy: Convert Afternoon I case studies into essay material
"8-criteria sparring": A system for getting consistently useful feedback from generative AI
"5-section outline template": Build an outline in 15 minutes no matter what topic comes up

The app "STSA Drill" works as a general-purpose tool too

The app is called "STSA Drill," but in practice it's a general-purpose essay-writing practice tool that works just as well for PM, AU, and SM exam prep. The Afternoon I × Afternoon II matching and the sparring prompt generation function the same way regardless of which category you're studying for.

Essay-style questions are expected to remain in the new "Professional Digital Skills Examination" as well (the format for Section B is still under review, but the policy is to maintain the current scope of knowledge and skills). The core of the app should carry over just fine.

Takeaways: 3 things this whole experience revealed about exam prep in the generative AI era

Three core insights emerged from this whole endeavor.

1. Win on "depth," not "volume." Memorizing three thin outlines is weaker than squeezing every last drop out of one project. Generative AI becomes your sparring partner for going deep.

2. The "perspective switch" is the ultimate skill. The ability to talk about the same facts from a management / technical / operational perspective is directly transferable beyond exam prep — to CxO briefings and design reviews in the real world.

3. Generative AI is a "sparring partner," not a "teacher who gives you the answers." Memorizing an essay the AI wrote won't help you reproduce it under exam conditions. The process of dialoguing with AI to find your own words is itself the most powerful exam preparation there is.

The plan was blocked twice over. Both the simultaneous sitting and the exam categories themselves.

But the methodology of "digging deep into one project from multiple angles and switching perspectives to tell the story differently" will live on, whatever the exams end up being called.

With the first-half sitting in November 2026 in sight, I'll start with one category. With generative AI as my partner, the challenge continues.

Study method elements introduced in this article

One-project reuse strategy (5-section outline template structure)

Afternoon I → Afternoon II reverse-import strategy

Perspective Switch Drill (ST/SA writing differentiation training)

8 evaluation criteria for the sparring prompt

ST/SA differentiation for the essay overview sheet

iPad study app "STSA Drill" concept

All of these ideas apply not just to ST/SA but to advanced-level essay exams in general — and to the new exam system from FY2027 onward.

The app I built to run this entire study plan on a single iPad

Let me introduce it one more time. I completed and released the iPad-exclusive study app "STSA Drill" that I had already written requirements for. Passing both ST and SA is now physically impossible, but using the app for just one of them is still well worth it — and even apart from the exams, I believe the ST/SA "perspective switch" is a skill worth having.

The main features are as follows.