Levi Botelho's Coding Blog

The Great Big Microsoft Certification 70-487 Study Guide - Materials

Apr 20, 2013
2 minute read

So, I ended up passing the certification. I hope that you’ll find the links as helpful as I did. As an added bonus, I’ve decided to post here two files which helped me study for the certification:

  1. A Word document containing the links and topics covered.
  2. An Excel spreadsheet to track your progress.

The Word Document

The Word Document is nothing special, just a copy of the links available in my other post. I did, however, find it useful because it allowed me to cross subjects off as I went through them. Because the subject matter of the certification is so vast, I found this to be quite helpful.

The Excel Spreadsheet

This sheet contains three pages:

  1. A general overview page. This shows how much of each category you have studied and how you are doing in regards to the full exam. The weighting is done using a system of points. 1000 points are assigned to the entire exam, and divided amongst the categories based on the amount of the exam which they represent (according to Microsoft). To use this page, simply do the following:
    1. Change cell F43 to be "=1 -F44/(DATE(YOUR END DATE)-DATE(YOUR START DATE))"
    2. Change cell F44 to be "=DATE(YOUR END DATE)-TODAY()"
  2. A details page. This is where you indicate if you have covered a given topic or not. To use this sheet simply fill the "Completed" column with zeroes, and then change them to ones as you review each topic.
  3. A burndown chart. This is for those Agile developers out there who wish to track their progress as they go along. I found this to be terribly useful in seeing how I was doing in the larger scheme of things and in making sure that I kept on the right track time-wise. To use this page, simply do the following:
    1. Modify the number of columns to match your study timeframe
    2. Modify the target values such that they plot a nice straight target line going from 1000 points when you start, to 0 when you intend to finish.
    3. Empty the "End of Day" row, and fill in the amount of remaining points (shown in cell T1) at the end of each day you study.

I found both these resources indispensable whilst I was studying. I hope they’ll be of use to some of you as well!

  • [Get the Word Document](http://levibotelho.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/70-487-Topics.docx)
  • [Get the Excel spreadsheet](http://levibotelho.azurewebsites.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/70-487-Progress.xlsx)