TOGAF Experience
Couple of days back, I passed the TOGAF foundation test, I still have to complete the part 2 test. I read through various blogs on TOGAF before writing the exam. Most of them seem little old, and also I wanted to share my experience with TOGAF for folks who want to write the exam.
Few months back, my friend suggested Udemy.com for taking online courses in software. Being a system architect, I searched for that. I found a training course on TOGAF, prior to that I had heard about it, but had no idea about it. So I did sign up for the course. The course gives you brief overview about TOGAF and covers the topic and at the end of each lectures, would recommend you to read the chapter from the online book from open group on TOGAF. Each chapter was so filled with content, I was kind of getting overwhelmed as well as intimidated by the content. Udemy course is just 10$-12$, it is a good place to start. There are other affiliated vendors providing the course, but those were not in my budget.
Once when searching for TOGAF book on Amazon, I found the TOGAF 9 foundation study guide book and my folks given a positive review to that book and mentioned that book was good enough to pass. The cost of the book was around $40, so I purchased it. I read through the book one chapter a day, by time I finished the book, I had little grasp on the subject, but was not confident enough. If you read each chapter multiple times and make your own notes, this book is all you need to pass.
I took some tests that were available online, but did not do that well as I expected. One of recommendation in one of the blog was to read the chapters few times. So I started reading the book again in a faster pace, that made me little confident. I spoke to a friend who had given the exam, he recommended the practice test book from Validumps.com, I tell you that is very helpful. My friend had made a visio diagram with each topic and concepts, I liked that idea. I did not use his visio, but I created my own notes and abbreviations or acronyms to remember each concept like governance repository has Reference data, Process status, and Audit information, I changed the sequence and called it (PAR), architecture principle in my world was called SUCCR. I did this for various topic and it helped me remember. Another thing I realized is every definition has a key word associated with it it like Architecture Definition Document has qualitative word in its definition and architecture review specification has quantitative word associated with it, that makes it easy to relate and good thing about the test is the answers listed in the option are not too close.
One recommendation, I have to read each chapters atleast 3-5 times before the test. Focus on ADM and its objective along with outputs. Basic questions are easy to crack. On the back of the foundation study guide, you have 80 question, you can purchase the same for 99 cents on Opengroup site, those questions are good enough. There are other tests that are available online, those are little harder, don't focus on them too much. One more thing that happens to me is if I start doing too many tests, the quality begins to decrease as I stopped using my instincts and focused more through memory like I might remember answer for 5 is D instead of reading what the answers is, even if I think answer should be B, I would select D and I end up being wrong sometimes. My advice do not take more than 4-5 weeks max to prepare and 1 hour a day is good enough. I took 7-8 weeks to prepare and give the test, which I thinks was a total torture. On the last 2 days I would have spent 5-6 hours reading through the books, notes, and sample questions.
On the day of the exam, I just reviewed my notes and I was scheduled for the test at 3:15 PM, I showed up at 2:15 PM at the test center, I was in little hurry to finish it off and I was confident as well. I started my test around 2:30 PM and first 8-10 questions were straight forward and then couple of them in between were tricky. I don't know whether I got them right. You have an option to flag the questions that you are doubtful about and can review them later. By the time I finished I had 10 questions in review, which was good, I knew even if I got them all wrong I would still pass. I finished my exam in 30 minutes, and spent reviewing couple of questions for few more minutes, that I still had doubts.
I checked my question one more time and clicked end review for submission, there are couple of prompts to make sure you want to proceed. I clicked yes, and screen was refreshing for almost 10-20 seconds, it felt like eternity at that moment, I passed with a decent score. I would have liked 85% or above but I did not get it, but I was glad I did not end up losing $320.
Ideally I would have like to give both the part 1 and 2 together, I didn't get the desired dates, it was one month from now and I had no patience to wait that long. My advice is book the test 4-5 weeks in advance before you start the preparation and you can reschedule the dates if you are not ready. I signed up when I was ready and I did not get the desired dates, so I ended up taking test 1 only. Test 2 seems little more easier, will write about it once I get through.
Few months back, my friend suggested Udemy.com for taking online courses in software. Being a system architect, I searched for that. I found a training course on TOGAF, prior to that I had heard about it, but had no idea about it. So I did sign up for the course. The course gives you brief overview about TOGAF and covers the topic and at the end of each lectures, would recommend you to read the chapter from the online book from open group on TOGAF. Each chapter was so filled with content, I was kind of getting overwhelmed as well as intimidated by the content. Udemy course is just 10$-12$, it is a good place to start. There are other affiliated vendors providing the course, but those were not in my budget.
Once when searching for TOGAF book on Amazon, I found the TOGAF 9 foundation study guide book and my folks given a positive review to that book and mentioned that book was good enough to pass. The cost of the book was around $40, so I purchased it. I read through the book one chapter a day, by time I finished the book, I had little grasp on the subject, but was not confident enough. If you read each chapter multiple times and make your own notes, this book is all you need to pass.
I took some tests that were available online, but did not do that well as I expected. One of recommendation in one of the blog was to read the chapters few times. So I started reading the book again in a faster pace, that made me little confident. I spoke to a friend who had given the exam, he recommended the practice test book from Validumps.com, I tell you that is very helpful. My friend had made a visio diagram with each topic and concepts, I liked that idea. I did not use his visio, but I created my own notes and abbreviations or acronyms to remember each concept like governance repository has Reference data, Process status, and Audit information, I changed the sequence and called it (PAR), architecture principle in my world was called SUCCR. I did this for various topic and it helped me remember. Another thing I realized is every definition has a key word associated with it it like Architecture Definition Document has qualitative word in its definition and architecture review specification has quantitative word associated with it, that makes it easy to relate and good thing about the test is the answers listed in the option are not too close.
One recommendation, I have to read each chapters atleast 3-5 times before the test. Focus on ADM and its objective along with outputs. Basic questions are easy to crack. On the back of the foundation study guide, you have 80 question, you can purchase the same for 99 cents on Opengroup site, those questions are good enough. There are other tests that are available online, those are little harder, don't focus on them too much. One more thing that happens to me is if I start doing too many tests, the quality begins to decrease as I stopped using my instincts and focused more through memory like I might remember answer for 5 is D instead of reading what the answers is, even if I think answer should be B, I would select D and I end up being wrong sometimes. My advice do not take more than 4-5 weeks max to prepare and 1 hour a day is good enough. I took 7-8 weeks to prepare and give the test, which I thinks was a total torture. On the last 2 days I would have spent 5-6 hours reading through the books, notes, and sample questions.
On the day of the exam, I just reviewed my notes and I was scheduled for the test at 3:15 PM, I showed up at 2:15 PM at the test center, I was in little hurry to finish it off and I was confident as well. I started my test around 2:30 PM and first 8-10 questions were straight forward and then couple of them in between were tricky. I don't know whether I got them right. You have an option to flag the questions that you are doubtful about and can review them later. By the time I finished I had 10 questions in review, which was good, I knew even if I got them all wrong I would still pass. I finished my exam in 30 minutes, and spent reviewing couple of questions for few more minutes, that I still had doubts.
I checked my question one more time and clicked end review for submission, there are couple of prompts to make sure you want to proceed. I clicked yes, and screen was refreshing for almost 10-20 seconds, it felt like eternity at that moment, I passed with a decent score. I would have liked 85% or above but I did not get it, but I was glad I did not end up losing $320.
Ideally I would have like to give both the part 1 and 2 together, I didn't get the desired dates, it was one month from now and I had no patience to wait that long. My advice is book the test 4-5 weeks in advance before you start the preparation and you can reschedule the dates if you are not ready. I signed up when I was ready and I did not get the desired dates, so I ended up taking test 1 only. Test 2 seems little more easier, will write about it once I get through.
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