Why I started the certification journey

Over a couple of years I have played a bit with Azure - mainly App Services and Azure Functions/Azure Logic Apps. I have also listened to numerous podcasts like Cloudskills, The Cloudcast and The Azure Podcast (to name a few) over some time and generally been interested in what cloud computing has to offer over several years. In April I got bad news after an x-ray that I had to do surgery on the 5th metatarsal on my left foot. This was a huge blow to me since I did the same surgery to my right foot only 3 years ago. In stead of digging myself completely down into a hole I decided that I had to make the best of it. Sitting around just watching Netflix wasn’t very appealing. Last time I went through the same surgery I did some project management certifications like PMP and Prince2. I never really went the direction of becoming a project manager - the technical side seems way more appealing. So this time around I decided I was going to learn more about Azure and verifying my skills through certifications!

The journey

The basics of Azure was pretty much there, but I decided to verify those through a certification: Azure Fundamentals. Although I had a rough grip on most of the fundamentals I sat through a course on Udemy specifically aimed at this certification. This was back in the beginning of May and I was off to a great start to my certification-journey.

Towards the end of May I had the surgery done and I was happy to get down to the nitty gritty details about Azure. To earn the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification there are two exams: Microsoft Azure Architect Technologies and Microsoft Azure Architect Design. For both of these I relied on courses on Udemy, test/sample exams and Microsofts own documentation of the different products/services in Azure. I learned a lot of new things working towards these exams. Coming from the developer side of things a lot of the network related topics were tough, since this is not something I have worked a lot with previously. Definitively a certification I can recommend if you want to maximize the learning and gaining a reward through a certification in the end. It’s not an easy certification by no means - so be prepared to spend some time working towards it.

The plan was just to do the Azure Solutions Architect Expert certification. But then a slow summer (with a walking boot on my foot) came along and also a late summer vacation from work. This meant that I had to make my own work through the summer anyways - so I decided to at least learn more about the security technologies in Azure since I am currently involved in a project which probably will rely on a subset of these. Once again I went through a course on Udemy, tested stuff and did some test/sample exams. In the end I got the Microsoft Azure Security Technologies certification as well. Having done the Solution Architect exams it wasn’t to hard to pass this exam, although you have to prepare to spend time preparing for this exam as well. This had to be enough, right?

Well, I wasn’t quite done. Coming from a developer background it was kind of strange that I didn’t go for at least the AZ-204: Developing Solutions for Azure. So that is exactly what I did. A lot of the foundation for this exam had already been made through the Solution Architect exams and the AZ-500, but of course - there are topics here that you have to spend time on. Although this is a developer certification I spent limited time doing actual coding while preparing - and through the exam there is also not that much actual coding skills needed. A little surprising, but I guess the concepts are more important anyways. I figured this had to be enough this summer - and I sat aside more certification work for this summer for about a week. But then I realized that it was just one more exam for getting the DevOps Engineer Expert through Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions. Since my foot still (after 3 months!) wasn’t good enough to drop the walking boot I decided to do the AZ-400 as the last exam this time around. I passed the exam, but be sure that it involves a great deal of work to get through all the topics you are required to have knowledge on.

To summarize. From May to August I have received these certifications:

Azure certifications

Are certifications worth it?

For me it isn’t really the certifications themselves that are the value. Certain companies of course value certifications more than others, so they can be great to have on your resume of course. What certifications help me do is to scope down something to some specific learning points. Azure as an ecosystem is huge, so having the certifications knowledge requirements as a tool help you to scope and structure the learning process is great. At least this is what I feel. Sitting down and just learn more about Azure is of course possible without doing the certifications - but using learning material scoped for the certifications has helped me to focus my learning.

Now it’s soon back to work, so we’ll see which certification will be next!