Over the previous few years Microsoft has dramatically modified its method to certification, shifting away from {qualifications} related to particular merchandise to as a substitute align them with frequent job roles. The concept is to supply experience-based studying delivered and assessed in small chunks, moderately than forcing IT professionals to cram for a protracted, theoretical examination each few years.
“We rebooted certifications across the trendy jobs and roles that folks have, as builders, as IT professionals,” Jeff Sandquist, company vp of developer relations at Microsoft, instructed CIO.com. “We labored with a set of trade companions and with numerous corporations and enterprises [to ask]: What are the job duties you want; what’s that ability completion? What are the trendy roles; what are the duties that it’s good to full as a person? After which how do you go and validate that?”
The modifications to certifications are half of a bigger overhaul of how Microsoft delivers documentation, designs coaching, and assesses information, with overlapping modules that add as much as both preparation for exams you are taking to achieve an preliminary certification or “information checks” that rely towards free annual renewals.
This “system of studying,” as Sandquist describes it, is offered not simply from Microsoft but in addition from coaching companions, with a number of methods for folks to study and coaching content material aligned to what’s lined within the certifications.
“If you wish to go study from in-person coaching, superior. If you wish to go study from studying a e book, that’s nice. If you wish to go to one in all our third-party trainers or one in all our on-line useful resource companions at Coursera or Pluralsight, superior. You need to go to Microsoft Study, that’s nice,” he says, of the varied totally different types of coaching on provide for IT professionals.
Sandquist hopes that even an organization’s inner coaching will align with Microsoft’s imaginative and prescient, which is why the Studying module in Microsoft Viva exhibits content material from Pluralsight, edX, Skillsoft, and Coursera, in addition to Microsoft Study. “We would like all of it in sync.”