Self-Assessment

It's easy to forget that there is quite a difference between the various Microsoft developer exams and the Solution Architectures exam, particularly in exam style and target audience. The Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) classification of exams (Visual Basic .NET, C#, and XML Web services) shows code segments and asks detailed questions, attempting to assess your skill at writing code. Conversely, the Solution Architectures exam is more about making decisions based on information in a case study combined with your own experience. It attempts to assess your skills at sifting through volumes of information, some relevant, some not, and making the correct call.

Another "caution flag" area is based on a common tendency for developers to label themselves as "architects" and do architecture-type activities just because they have been developers for a long time. Like first-line managers who see themselves as middle managers, some developers believe that time alone qualifies them to become an architect.

There is certainly some validity to that viewpoint. Just as assistant coaches in sports become head coaches, partly because they absorb knowledge from their mentors and partly from game experience, you can learn a great deal about best-practices architecture just by watching others. However, without independent study and a way to certify the results of that study, turning a self-taught person without certification loose on a large project might not be wise.

Bad architecture cannot be overcome with skilled code. Design flaws sometimes show up right away, when you first do performance tests, or when you try to isolate intermittent problems with little or no debug information. Other times, flaws might not show up until later, when you try to extend the application and find that you cannot do so without extensive and costly refactoring, or when you find that malevolent intruders have breached your security scheme.

For these reasons, Microsoft has created a new certification level between the Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP) and the Microsoft Certified Solution Developer (MCSD) called the MCAD. This new certification is intended to provide a path for those developers who want only to construct, not to design. The side effect of the new MCAD certification is that it allows the MCSD certification to focus more strongly on that percentage of the population committed to learning the science and art of solution architecture.

Another misconception sometimes found in the development community is that passing any exam is possible, regardless of your current knowledge base, if only the prep books (like this one) are good enough. I don't believe that philosophy works for this exam, however. Although I've attempted to provide as much information as I can within the book's page limits, some amount of previous experience is required before you set out to take (and presumably pass) the Solution Architectures exam (70-300). Microsoft's published exam guidelines reinforce this recommendation by stating that the target audience should have a minimum of two years' experience in solution design.

This experience can come from many sources: mentoring from others who already know the ins and outs of design; your own studies of white papers, magazine articles, books, and Web casts; and your previous work in designing small solutionseither doing things right or learning from your mistakes.

Although not a guarantee, a certification exam does two things. First, it separates those who are willing to devote the necessary time to their craft from those whose knowledge and experience don't meet established criteria. Second, it encourages serious students of software architecture to study the more useful aspects of design. Some people publicly deride certifications. However, if they had to choose between two people to join them on a project that is behind schedule, with past experience being equal, they would likely be swayed by the one with a certification that required a commitment of time and money.