A thought or two on the upcoming 74-322 exam

I made the "mistake" of registring for the 74-322 Microsoft Lync Server 2010 – Advanced Design and Deployment exam this week. And I probably have to retake it when it is released. Yes, you heard me, I probably have to retake it. I am a bit disappointed in my test center, because I asked if it was in release code or still beta. The told me it was released, so I wasn't ready for the beta setting at all.

It was a very good exam, and I was under the impression it will measure the right kind of knowledge (which I thought I had) for Gold competency partnership with Microsoft unified communication.

So why did I fail, was it too hard? Was I not prepared? Well, to be honest, The latter might be the answer. The reason I think I failed was the sheer time pressure I was under during the test. The test is still under Beta, and it has obviously not been adjusted for the amount of questions, nor was I given the extra 30 minutes we usually get when the exam is not in our native language.

The exam is supposed to test your advanced understanding of a Lync deployment, and I was given a lot of questions with a lot to read. I just didn't have enough time to read absolutely everything thorough enough to get the proper understanding of the questions. Non of the questions were too hard, and in a real life scenario it would be easy to find the answers to the customers questions just by going through the Technet Library on Lync.

I am not going to break any NDA's so I won't go into any details, but be prepared to be tested in advanced and detailed understanding of your Lync deployments. Take a good look on the advanced configuration scenarios on Technet and understand them. Then you will be on your way to passing this exam as well.

There is a lesson or two I learned in this though: I will obviously think twice about taking a Beta exam again, and I also know which gaps to fill to pass the exam once it is released.

Comments

Rune said…

I had the same experience when I made my attempt back in February. 120 minutes on 80 mostly information rich questions were simply not enough. I doubt MS get valuable results from this test. I haven't got the results yet, but I will fail.

April 29, 2012 at 4:30 PM

Johann said…

Hmmm - I had almost 50 minutes left after finishing; of course had to do some guessing. The exam was all about enterprise voice which is may daily work :-)

April 30, 2012 at 5:34 PM

Lasse Nordvik Wedø said…

Good for you Johann. That's less than a minute for each question, and I am a bit impressed.
I simply felt I could not read it all in such a short time. And I hate guessing on these exams, I like answering as correctly as I could. There were a few "traps" as far as I could tell. One answer might seem the obvious one, but another might be the more correct one.

I did not find any of the questions I read thoroughly too hard, as EV is my primary line of work. Which is why i said it was a good exam, because I felt I was tested on the knowledge you should have when taking this exam.

All in could tradition to filter out those who really know the technology :)

Let us know if you passed or not, I sure will :)

April 30, 2012 at 6:46 PM