MCSD: SharePoint Applications Certification Path Officially announced, No Upgrade Path for MCPD

July 9, 2013

After blogging about the MCSD 7 times in the past 7 months, I am happy to announce you that the MCSD: SharePoint Applications Certification path is finally publicly available!

So, let’s see what’s interesting:

1. I was right, the path is exams 480/486/488/489

In the past 7 blogs, I was almost certain that the unannounced exam was the 70-486, however with no official word from the part of Microsoft, I could not confirm anything. I am happy to have been right! Confirming the 70-486 today makes Perfect Sense.

Exam 70-486 is called: Developing ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Applications

And this, just got posted on the Microsoft Office Blog: Introducing MVC support for apps for SharePoint > http://blogs.msdn.com/b/officeapps/archive/2013/07/09/introducing-mvc-support-for-apps-for-sharepoint.aspx

2. Re-certification required every 2 years.

Like with the other MCSD Exams, to keep your certification you will need to re-certify every 2 years. This is different from the MCSE Certification where you need to recertifiy every 3 years.

3. There is no upgrade path

I think this was a bit of a last-minute decision by Microsoft. Here is why:

1. They Changed the FAQ on the home page. It used to be:

Q.I have an MCPD on Visual Studio 2010. How can I upgrade to an MCSD certification?

A.If you have achieved an MCPD: Windows Developer 4 certification, MCPD: Web Developer 4 certification, or MCPD: SharePoint Developer 2010 certification, you will be able to earn an MCSD certification on the corresponding solution by passing two exams.

Now, they took it off…

2. The Certification Planner included Exam 70-493

However, I can’t say it was truly last minute, because in February, J. Seymour from Microsoft said that the 70-493 exam didn’t exist.

3. Exam 480/486 won’t be required for the MCSM

In the past “version” of the MCSM path, you needed the “MCSD: SharePoint Applications” Certification for the MCSM starting January 2014. However, in the current version, you only need the 488/489 exams, and not the full MCSD.

That’s all, and I guess this post will end the rumours about the MCSD SharePoint 2013 Certification path. For your information and for fun, here are the past articles I did on the Cert Path: