New certification structure
Oooh! now this has caught my eye! In my dim and distant (and vaguely murky!) past, I used to be a Technical trainer. I used to train lots of Microsoft products ( I mean most of the Back office products, networking stuff and Internet type courses. I used to be really be proud of the fact that my MCP mumber was only 6 digits (167xxx) until I hired someone into the company with a 4 digit MCP nimber (10xx). Boy, was I jealous of his DOS MCP! (Yes TonyCM, you know who you are!)
So why is this important to you? Well, having people skilled and certified on Microsoft technology gives you an extra edge in being successful. Certifications are linked to specific versions of the technology so you can then ensure that you, or the person you hire is up to date with technology and also allows you to better identify exactly what people in your team are skilled on.
Having three tiers of certified professionals caters for different types of people and at different stages in their careers. For example:
Technology Specialist level is about proficiency in product skills (and is specific to a version of the product)
Certified IT Professional and Certified Professional Developer are about proficiency in product skills Certifications plus for general skills on being a good IT Pro or developer (like operational frameworks, etc).
Architect level takes certifications to a whole new level and requires an individual review of the persons knowledge and experience by a board of experts
I've followed the announcement of our new certification program with a great deal of interest. I was an MCSE on NT 3.51, 4.0 and Windows 2000 before moving on to other things and giving up the seemingly endless slog of exams that I needed to teach the courses (I was an MCT too before you ask by the way). So I was a little bit jealous that there are a new set of certifications on offer that I now don't have much chance of achieving (my day job totally gets in the way of studying for these new exams) and I spend most of my time chatting over coffee - sorry having "face to face" meetings with my colleagues!
So I may just have a go at another MCP - get my current score over 30 MCP's achieved. hee hee....