Visual Studio 2010 Exams Are Changing

Well, just a little.

After much thought, and then some more, along with discussions with the community, the product groups for Visual Studio and .NET 4, our own internal folks and anyone else who wanted to chime in, we have finally decided on most of the new developer certification plan.

Here are the 99% definite exams;

MCTS Web Developer

MCTS Windows Developer

MCTS Connecting to Data (ADO.NET)

MCTS WCF

MCPD Web Developer

MCPD Windows Developer

Here are the 50% definite exams;

MCTS Workflow

MCPD Enterprise

So, what are the changes I eluded to?

1) The Windows exam will cover both Windows Forms and WPF.  Percentages to be determined by your peers during the design sessions.  This will also help to address the feedback over the Windows vs WPF requirements for MCPD Enterprise on .NET 3.5.  NO, I don’t mean we are changing the 3.5 certs, I mean the new plan will not have seperate Forms/WPF issues.

2) Web to cover some Silverlight.  Why?  Silverlight is akin to nailing Jell-o to a wall.  The dev cycles are shorter than our exam dev cycle.  ouch!

3) Workflow has some great changes and is an awesome technology but, we need to decide based on other factors.

4) MCPD Enterprise in my opinion is still a non-defined audience.  I don’t feel we are positioning this exam correctly and we need more market research into what an “Enterprise Professional Developer” really is.  Thoughts and comments are welcome of course.

There will be Windows Mobile exams created, with one for 6.5 getting underway in June and the next version on the horizon.  Embedded is coming up as are Microsoft Office SharePoint Server dev exams, Expression Blend and perhaps Web.  We are still trying to nail down a Software Tester style cert as well.

All fun here in Redmond for sure.

I could post more, but I don’t want to.  Actually, I can’t because we still need to lock firmly on what we have committed to.

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome.

 

Gerry