My TOGAF 9.2 Exam Experience

On the first of April I passed the TOGAF 9.2 Combined Part 1 and 2 certification!
 
 

 

My colleagues were asking me about my experience on this certification, so I thought to write up on my TOGAF 9.2 Exam Experience and share it with you all.

Why TOGAF?

In the last couple of years I’ve obtained a couple of VMware and other vendor certifications. After that I wanted to broaden my knowledge outside the vendor specific certification and more in the IT architect certification direction. After some research into various architect certification, I found that TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) is a widely used architecture frameworks in the industry. A small summary of TOGAF in one sentence would be: “TOGAF is a framework for enterprise architectures which provides an approach for planning, designing, implementing and governing an enterprise technology architecture.”. And this fitted my goal perfectly as the framework can be tailored to different needs and I use from it only what is required for my project.

The Preparation

I followed the 4 day TOGAF 9.2 Foundation and Certified (Part 1 & 2) training at The knowledge Academy. Normally I’m not a big fan of 4 consecutive days of training, but in this case it was better than go through the 500+ pages documentation by myself. And in my case the trainer gave a lot of good tips (which I come to later in this article) and tricks on how to tackle this specific exam.

After the training I immediately scheduled the exam for two weeks later. Because I know if I didn’t schedule the exam immediately, I would postpone the exam indefinitely.
While preparing for the exam I used a lot of practice questions provided by the trainer. My goal with these practice questions is not only to find the right answer, but simply explain why one is the correct answer and why not the other ones. Because in my opinion it is easier to find the correct answer if you can eliminate the incorrect ones first.

The Exam

There are three TOGAF examinations available:

1. TOGAF 9 Part 1 Exam
   • This is the examination for the TOGAF 9 Foundation certification.
   • This exam comprises 40 questions in simple multiple choice format, covering the Level 1 learning outcomes (see the Conformance Requirements for detail). Each correct answer scores a single point. The pass mark is 55% (22 or more questions out of a maximum of 40).
2. TOGAF 9 Part 2 Exam
   • This is the examination for the TOGAF 9 Certified certification.
   • This exam comprises 8 complex scenario questions, with gradient scoring. This exam is open book and covers the complete Level 2 learning outcomes. The correct answer scores 5 points, the second best answer 3 points, the third best answer 1 point. The distracter scores zero points. The pass mark is 60% (24 or more points out of a maximum of 40).
3. TOGAF 9 Combined Part 1 and Part 2 Exam
• This is a combined TOGAF 9 Part 1 and Part 2 examination for candidates who want to achieve the TOGAF 9 Certified certification (Level 2) directly in a single examination. It consists of two sections, with pass marks as per the TOGAF 9 Part 1 and Part 2 examinations described above. Each section must be passed in order to obtain an overall pass mark.

I took the TOGAF Combined exam as a Pearson Vue online proctored exam. You can read my online proctored tips in my previous article: VCAP Data Center Virtualization Design 2021. I do like the online proctored exams, but the moderator message me a couple of times to not move my lips and remove my hand from my face while reading. Apparently I do that a lot while reading… But be careful because the moderator can fail you for this if they expect illegal activities.

After I finished Part 1 and Part 2 from the exam I clicked the “End Exam” button the Pearson Vue app closed, no result, no message nothing…
At that moment I thought something went wrong and my exam had failed. I quickly logged onto the Pearson Vue site and saw that the exam was marked as “Completed”, clicked on result and voila I passed!

Tips

TOGAF Part 1:

As described above, use practice questions. Don’t go the easy route and only answer them, but explain why and also explain why the other answers are incorrect.

Some practice exams (read exam dumps…) contain wrong answers, so that’s why the bullet above is so important.

Eat, sleep, learn the ADM phases and repeat, it will become handy.

Mark questions you are not 100% sure on, you can come back to them at the end if time allows for it

Don’t get stuck on one question and waste time, mark it down and continue

 
TOGAF Part 2:

Memorize key pages of the TOGAF Personal PDF Edition, it will come in handy if you don’t have to scroll through the whole document searching for those key pages

When you go through the practice questions, try to rank the answers in “best answer”, “2nd answer”, “3rd answer” and “distractor”.

Also try to identify the distractor before you start ranking the others answers. If you manage to identify the distractor on every question it will increase your chance to pass, as you can now get 1, 3 or 5 points out of 5.

 

Conclusion

I’ve learned a lot from my TOGAF journey. Maybe I won’t use the full framework everyday but I certainly learned a lot that will be beneficial in my day to day work.

I wish you all the best on your TOGAF journey, if you want to pursue this certification as well. Drop me messages if you need any help!