Microsoft Certifications: I'm Already Certified as an MCPD and I Want to Upgrade. Where do I start?

For those of you who have already acquired an MCPD in either Windows, Web or Enterprise for .NET 2.0, I have some good news and some bad news.

First the good news.  You are only one exam away from upgrading your skills to .NET 3.5 MCPD, (almost).  The almost means that for Web and Windows, there will be one upgrade exam but for Enterprise, there will be two, similar to .NET 2.0.  There is just too much stuff to cover for one upgrade exam.

That's right, we have kept the same pillars for the MCPD track that you are already familiar with in 2.0.  We will have MCPD Web, Windows and Enterprise for .NET 3.5.

Obviously some of the material will be different such as needing to know WCF, ADO etc. for MCPD Enterprise Developer and of course MCPD Web will be renamed to MCPD ASP.NET, official names to follow.

So, what is the bad news?  Well, you won't be able to upgrade until the exams become available.  At this time, I don't have an ETA on that availability.   One of the reasons is that upgrade exams are comprised of multiple other exams from the TS and Pro tracks.  At this time, only our TS level exams are nearing completion and the Pro level exams are still a way out.

This of course provides you the ability to get up to speed on the new technologies in .NET 3.5 before the exams launch. 

These delays are a direct result of the issues we faced with the Pro level exam retirement decision and we couldn't create these exams until we had a solid decision and game plan in place.  Please ensure you watch the MCP web site and your MCP Flash newsletters for the announcements around those decisions and to better help you understand why the Pro certifications were delayed.  I won't go into the specifics here as Trika and team have done a much better job at explaining this than I could possibly provide.

These upgrade paths have been a long time coming and we appreciate your patience in waiting for this information, well, most of you were patient.  ;-)

I hope it is good news and that you will be satisfied with the decisions we have made.  They were done with your best interests in mind.

As always, opinions, comments and questions welcome.

 

Gerry