In the early days of certification, you either went on the vendor course and/or you knew the product from working with it, and then took the exams. For example, when I originally completed my MCSE in early 1996, there was a Microsoft self-study kit for NT 3.51 Workstation and Server, but other than that the only resources I had to prepare for the exams were manuals, resource kits and the products themselves. At the time, NT classes were few and far between -- and besides, I was far too busy at work to consider attending classroom education.

These days, when it comes to study materials, we have a multitude of choices, so you can effectively make a trade-off of preparation time taken vs. cost of materials. For example, there is still nothing preventing us just using the product and reading its documentation in preparation for an exam -- and in fact, that's exactly what I will do when the new upgrade exams are released for Domino R6 later this year (I did the same for Domino R5). I don't deny that this can be time consuming, but along the way I've found I have learned a great deal. Not all of this knowledge has been useful for the exams per se, but it has sometimes been useful when I have needed to work with these products.

Depending on the certification you wish to pursue, you often have plenty of options available to assist with your learning. For common certifications there will often be at least an exam study guide, a summary guide as well as sample exam questions available. Each of these can have a part to play in your preparations. However, I caution you not lose sight of the forest for the trees (with apologies for those studying Active Directory!). Remember that you are doing this to learn something. Don't limit your studies only to the areas most likely to be on the exam! There are usually many things you need to know to work with a product that aren't covered in the exam objectives. In fact, when I prepare for an exam, I like to read as much as I can about the product/technology so that I can get a broader view. This maybe something you'll want consider in your preparations, although I acknowledge we are all limited in how much time we have available for this.

When you understand this tradeoff for your exam preparation, it makes a mockery of those who claim that it costs up to $15,000 to gain an advanced certification. Sure, that's one way to do it, but the only fixed cost in any equation is for the exams themselves. Everything else is an individual matter of time against the cost of study resources. There is an exception to the rule though, and that is if you are starting out in IT and using certification as a lever to learn the basics of your craft. (But in that case, completing say an MCSE or an advanced Cisco certification isn't a great idea anyway, since you don't have the practical experience to compliment the material presented). Here much of the material is new and a classroom session with a good teacher can help put the material in context. However, once you have the basics understood, there is no reason why you shouldn't be able to pick a product or technology and learn the rest under your own steam.

At the other end of the scale, just because a resource is available doesn't mean you should use it. Recently, a vendor was successfully prosecuted for selling certification exam questions. I hope that there is more of this to come. There is another vendor who I won't mention here that seems to me to be selling documents that include exact exam questions and the correct answers. I don't know why these folks are still in business, but I can only hope that they are brought to justice sooner rather than later. Even worse, I'm finding that when I send staff to official Microsoft courses, the Microsoft Certified Trainers are recommending this vendor as a resource for exam preparation. Justify it however you like, but there's no way to convince me that braindumps aren't cheating. That's right -- this is not just a time saver, this is cheating! If people successfully pass an exam by rote learning all of the answers beforehand, they can't then expect to have any credibility later when they decry the lack of industry respect for certification.

The bottom line is that it is important not to lose sight of why you are undertaking certification and confusing means with ends. The certification gained is not an end in itself, but a means to demonstrate that you understand -- and I mean really understand -- the subject matter covered by the exam objectives.

Questions? Comments? Post your thoughts below!