TechnoAg

I passed my last certification exam, 70-300 Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures this morning. It was a pretty tough exam. I had to read three case studies describing a companys current IT environment, their business objectives or problems, and interviews with stakeholders, and develop a solution going through each phase of the Microsoft Solutions Framework. This, more than any exam, is one that you need to have practical real world experience to really prepare for the exam. My main problem with the exam, and the study materials, is that the questions are very subjective. There were several that I disagreed with because I didn’t think their solution fit the problem, or that you could interpet the business requirements into an alternate data model. There were several times that I had to ignore my inner Architect and answer they way I thought they wanted. I think the main skill for this exam is reading comprehension. I got in the habit of reading the question multiple times just to see if there was another way you could read it.

Now, that I’ve passed and earned my Microsoft Certifed Solution Developer, I’m going to take a break from studying and dive into some side projects that have been laying around waiting for me to finish up. I gotta figure out what this whole .Net 2.0 thing is, and check out why everyone is so excited about SQL Server 2005.

Scoble mentions advantages to small teams with a link to 37signals blog article about not writing functional specs, but instead a one page story and focus on designing the user interface.

Joel has a similar, no-frills approach to writing Painless Functional Specifications.

I think the discussion should be less of whether or not to write them, but what should go in them. More often than not, I find functional specifications are full of useless, irrelevant information. I think the industry needs to move away from measuring the value of functional specs by how loud the thud is when it hits the desk, but instead using your time wisely and focus on what really matters…like screenshots.

I’ve been playing with 37signals Ta-Da Lists, and I really like their approach to UI design, simple and straightforward.