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If you are preparing for the MCDST exam, you might be interested in this clinic. This exam preparation clinic provides an overview of the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve the Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Technician credential. This course prepares individuals for MCP exam 70-271 and 70-272. For additional MCDST resources check out Exam Preparation Tools on TechGalaxy’s Microsoft Training and Certification page.

Title: Clinic 2263: Exam Preparation for the MCDST Certification
Course Type: Self-paced Course
Available Offline: Yes
Estimated Time of Completion: 6 Hours
Language: English

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The Microsoft Certified Architect Program identifies top industry experts in IT Architecture. These professionals have 10 or more years of experience, possess strong technical and leadership skills and form an elite community. Unlike other IT certifications, this credential was built and is granted by industry architects, as candidates must pass a rigorous review board with previously certified architects.

This certification is targeted to practicing solutions architects and infrastructure architects who have successfully applied frameworks and methodologies to create an architecture that serves the entire IT lifecycle. These architects can employ multiple technologies to solve business problems and provide business metrics and measurements to describe the success or failure of the projects they drive.

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Microsoft has announced its first brand-new certification in years, one aimed at high-level IT pros with significant experience in architecting solutions that involve Microsoft (and non-Microsoft) products. At 101communications’ TechMentor conference in Orlando, Al Valvano, Lead Product Manager with Microsoft Learning, unveiled the Microsoft Certified Architect Program (MCAP), a board-level certification on a scale the company has never attempted before.

Some highlights from Valvano’s keynote:

1. The MCAP will consist of prerequisite training and experience, and the skills domain that candidates will face throughout the process will be broad, including such objectives as project management, decisionmaking and oral and verbal communication. Valvano said it’s too early to give any definition to those requirements, and wouldn’t say whether any of the current exams or training in the MCP program would be applicable to the MCAP.

2. Candidates will be assigned a mentor to help foster success through the program’s rigorous certification process. Valvano said that mentors will come from Microsoft as well as externally chosen sources.

3. Candidates, with the help of the mentor, would apply for entrance registration into the architecture candidate process, which consists of a written submission and board examinations. Valvano said that details on what the written submission process and who would be on the peer-review board were still in development. Valvano compared the process to attaining a Ph.D, where a candidate has to defend a thesis.

4. Valvano stressed that only about a quarter of the emphasis of a candidate’s knowledge will be on Microsoft-related architecture technologies; the rest will relate to general architecture principles and best practices that aren’t Microsoft specific. A candidate for the MCAP will have to have a broad-based knowledge that extends well beyond the narrow bounds of Windows.

5. Finally, Valvano estimated that completion of the program could take from six to 12 months and would not come cheap. Valvano says that the program is designed to pay for itself; nonetheless, he says that “it will take a substantial commitment in time and money” for both the candidate and the board to come together for all the meetings and tests for completing each step.

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Microsoft will add a new high-level certification, the Microsoft Certified Architect (MCA), to its credentialing program in the near future. The certification, which will verify IT professionals’ ability to develop and implement enterprise-level IT solutions, will be divided into industry architect standards (comprising 75 percent of the program) and Microsoft technology (25 percent).

We feel that we’re responding to a very clearly articulated customer need and very well understood job role that’s already in the industry, but really lacks a recognized accreditation around it, said Al Valvano, business and product strategy group manager for certification and assessment operations at Microsoft Learning. In this case, we’re trying to validate a very influential, very high-impact and very technically challenging job role: architects working at enterprise organizations who are tasked with the infrastructure, the overall technology road map. The skills domain that you have to measure to accurately credential that is very, very broad.

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Microsoft is about to incorporate performance-based testing in all core Windows 2003 exams. Through simulated environments, IT professionals taking exams for certification will now be required to demonstrate their knowledge of products and processes they may encounter on the job. This dramatic change in the testing protocol is designed to increase the value and credibility of the MCP credential.

Microsoft wants to offer certification that helps assure MCPs are experienced and qualified to help with their IT problems. But traditional multiple choice tests don’t always do a complete job of testing IT professionals’ ability to perform practical, real-world tasks end to end. So the Microsoft Learning team has developed a new system of testing that evaluates on-the-job skills of an IT pro. Click here for Q&A on this topic.

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