Exam MB-400: My Experience

This morning I finally got the result from an exam I did a while ago: the MB-400: Microsoft Power Apps + Dynamics 365 Developer.

I passed it (result here) but I learned two important lessons:

• I will never do again a Beta exam
• I need to prepare better the exams

The reasons I took this exam in Beta were essentially two: I got an early discount code (here a mention of it for the first 300 people) and it was the first technical exam about Dynamics 365 released in a long time.

The previous technical exam was MB2-701 Extending Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 (that I passed too by the way) and I was eager to prove myself that I still got it. My main skills regarding Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform are technical, so I felt that I needed to do this exam, as additional proof I didn't do yet the MB-200: Microsoft Power Platform + Dynamics 365 Core that is considered by many one of the exams that you need to take if you want to start this path.

If you use the discount code you have also a time limit (in my case was 12 December 2019) but due to previous commitments I scheduled the exam for 14 November, only two weeks after the announcement.
In that two weeks I tried to prepare the exam the best as I could, but remember to follow the official exam skills in addition to the suggested learning path because (for example) the Learning path suggests Extend Dynamics 365 portals but Portals is not an argument included in the exam skills, and the exam skills contain PCF (Power Apps Component Framework) and a learning path is not available yet.

When I booked the exam I thought: "if I don't pass the exam it's the same, I can do it again" but after I did the exam I instantly regret the decision, because the exam was hard for the preparation I had and you don't get the result right away when you do a Beta exam. Waiting for over 3 months and be in a limbo where you don't know if you passed or not an exam is something I don't want to experience again.

So my suggestion is to always go prepared for the exams, and if you plan to take the MB-400 I suggest also to read the posts by Joe Griffin in his website.