Waldek Mastykarz is Microsoft Certified Professional Developer SharePoint 2010

Last May I’ve taken the beta versions of the two SharePoint 2010 Developer exams: 70-573 TS: Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Application Development and 70-576 PRO: Designing and Developing Microsoft SharePoint 2010 Applications. Today I received an e-mail saying that I successfully passed both exams and received the Microsoft Certified Professional Developer SharePoint 2010 status.

It was the first time that I participated in beta examination so I didn’t really know what to expect when I signed up for the exams. Doing the exams turned out to be a great experience: although you could feel it was a beta examination, it was great to see the results of hard work of the Microsoft Learning team.

I really like the way the exams are balanced now: while the TS exam covers the basics of SharePoint development, the PRO exam takes the content a step further verifying your knowledge about designing and developing SharePoint Solutions. Another great improvement in my opinion is the fact that there is no more separation based on SharePoint SKU. Being a certified developer for SharePoint 2010 means that you can design and develop solutions on the SharePoint 2010 platform no matter the SKU.

As I was participating in the beta run of the exams, I found it a bit challenging to prepare to the exams. Although I’ve been working with SharePoint 2010 for a while now and have some hands-on real life experience with it, there are so far no official preparation materials. There is the exam preparation guideline but you will have to gather all the content yourself. While preparing for the exams I found very useful the SharePoint 2010 Developer Training Course on Channel 9.

Having completed both exams I can definitely recommend them to you. The exams are a great way to verify your knowledge of SharePoint 2010 as development platform and if done well you can learn a lot of new things while preparing for the certification.

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