Month: November 2019

Passed AZ-900

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I’m happy to say that I’ve passed AZ-900 as part of my employer’s initiative to have everyone go through the Azure Fundamentals exam. This is a recognition that cloud is a core part of their business.

My thoughts? I perhaps underestimated the exam and although I passed well I didn’t ace it. I’ve scored more in other “harder” exams so I’d recommend what I try to tell myself – look through the actual product being tested (Azure Portal Features) and if you want to score more you’ll have to remember some of the detail of features and charging structures. I think the classic learning tips of What? How? When? for each exam objective will serve you well.

I’m beginning to realise that all of the exams are treated seriously and a pass (even for fundamentals) actually means something. Respect to my non technical colleagues and a little nudge to myself to treat things seriously!

Year 1 with my R1250 GS Adventure

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With overnight temperatures dropping in Scotland and salt being laid to mitigate icing, my motorbike is now tucked up for the winter and I’ve had a little time to reflect on the few months I’ve had of ownership.

With the finance concluding on my R1200GS Adventure earlier in the year I did the deal and went for the subdued choice of the Exclusive in Kalamata Olive. The Rallye was a little too bright for me and in the absence of a triple black was my natural choice.

In summary the styling has really come on with the latest generation of the adventure and the tank and bars are more integrated with the visual centre of mass having shifted down and forward to make the bike look smaller.

The engine and suspension are simply amazing – I didn’t have the adaptive suspension on my 1200 so it is impressive, the engine is better again (and I didn’t really explore the best of the 1200) and the various gadgets are a bit of fun.

My only criticism is the same as ever – the ergonomics are more mainstream meaning I miss the colossal seat to peg height of the older adventure, and I still miss the funny indicators of the old bmws.

A brilliant machine and I’m really looking forward to getting back out on it.

LED Headlight view of my R1250GS Adventure
My BMW R1250GS Adventure parked in the middle of a run on a Saturday morning
Cockpit view of my R1250GS Adventure with Motorrad Navigator fitted and TFT Display shown.

I passed Microsoft Exam 70-339 Managing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016

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I’m really happy to say that I (finally) passed 70-339 Managing Microsoft SharePoint Server 2016 on Friday after a couple of failed attempts. This was my 32nd exam pass and my first time pass percentage is quite high, mainly as I tend to be very careful about booking exams when I think I am well and ready for an exam. So what was different this time ?

1. I didn’t respect the exam

I think a run of first time passes on exams made me a little complacent and I relied too much on the good results I got with the official practice exam. I should have remembered how hard I found the breadth of the previous generation of SharePoint exams and though about the implications of a single exam for the whole product (there used to be two administrative exams for each version of SharePoint). I probably came short and should have thought harder about the implications of elements in the exam outline.

Having the product in front of you to try things out is also a proper lesson well remembered.

2. Study and exams don’t exist in a bubble

When I failed first time I took the standard approach and booked for a couple of weeks after, on the basis that my fail mark was just short of the required pass mark. Then some family stuff came up which meant that I didn’t get a lot of sleep the night before the exam and had a lot on my mind. This happens and there isn’t a lot that can be done; life is unpredictable and it’s important to work to live rather than get things the wrong way around. Reflecting on this made me think about my attitude during preparation and what techniques and methods might help with all of the aspects of my life.

3. Sit exams when you know stuff

This inelegant heading refers to my experience that sitting exams on subjects that directly relate to your day job is so much easier than others. I’ve not been working daily with SharePoint 2016 since my last job and I think that even that was focused on a narrow band of deployment. Both this exam and 70-532 Azure development were tough and that was because I didn’t have the day to day depth in a subject area like I have with Azure Architecture and Administration. Stretch targets are good but they need the work.

4. Sit exams when they are current

What I mean by this is that there is a natural curve to an exam lifetime. Some Microsoft exam areas are particularly current like the Azure Administration and Architecture exams and apart from tweaks to the platform will be active and up to date. I think the perfect set of circumstances is a year or so after an exam goes live in a technology that is in wide use. Contrast this to 70-339 which has been available since mid 2016 and relates to a product which has undergone a fundamental change in delivery – most users of SharePoint will now use the online product.

The other thing (excuse) is that the online documentation has shifted to the next iteration of the product and a whole bunch of historical items have got harder to find. To be blunt with myself I think this highlights that you need to have hands-on access to the product for proper study and in not doing this I set myself up (see point 1). That said, the exam outline still has the objective “configure connections to Access Control Service” which at the time of writing has been retired for almost a year!

5. Back off and regroup

Like my car driving test (I love driving!) sometimes I have to work hard to achieve something and sticking at it is a test of personality. Unfortunately due to what must be a bit of a personality defect it can take a couple of fails for me to realise that I have to buckle down and examine my strategy. In the case of 70-339 I waited a month or two after my second fail to have a think, see how things were going and take a bit more time out. In something I think is like a classic retry pattern I introduced a delay. Of course in development the delay would be a bit more regular in nature but hopefully you get my point.

In summary

I’m now going to pick off the two Microsoft cloud fundamentals exams for a bit of light relief and in support of my employer’s plan to have everyone in the company certified in AZ-900 and I’m also planning to do the next generation of the expert certification in Microsoft 365.

As it was the SharePoint pass gave me the 2019 badge for my MCSE in Cloud Productivity – perhaps this was my last 70-XXX exam!