Thoughts on Passing DA-100 and Why I Sat It the Second Time

I am thrilled to have just passed the DA-100 but thought I would share why I sat it, the resources I used and importantly what it means to me.  A little background about me, I work with Power BI every day and already had passed the MCSA BI Reporting certification, I’m a Microsoft Certified Trainer and have completed various courses including SQLBI.com, Power Query Academy and numerous others including using R and Python.  I work as a Freelance Data Analyst for a selection of different companies from different sectors.

So why did I choose to sit it again? 

I took advantage of the opportunity to sit the DA-100 during BETA version and in horrendous weather I lost my wifi connection during the exam.  Fortunately it was at the beginning but it meant I failed as I hadn’t completed the exam.  Not to worry I thought, I have the others, I don’t need it, it’s not a real fail, no-one will know.  Focused on my work and carried on working and learning and enjoying being part of the community.

Then the shields started appearing and the dialogues started and my peers that I respect achieved their awards, there’s so much of a buzz in being able to share the thrill of achieving such an award and for recognising the achievement of those that had sat the award.  Hmmm I thought, then Udit thanked me for helping him achieve his award and Matthew Roche wrote his blog post on the certification and I reflected on my own personal learning,  what certification means to me and what it means for my customers.

I came up with 3 thoughts – Technical Competence, Trust and Confidence, not necessarily in order of importance:

1. Technical competence – Certification ensures that you have a certain level of knowledge and skill that meets the needs of the syllabus. Sitting the DA100, for example, ensures that you have the depth of knowledge across the whole of the current Power BI area.  This is so important within Power BI working as an analyst, as you need to understand data, how to extract it, transform it, model it, visualise it and communicate to be effective.  You need to be up-to-date and this technology is moving fast! 
2. Being a Microsoft Certified Analyst gives my customers the confidence to trust me. Giving an external person access to your data is giving them access to your business and all the stories that are involved with the journey of your business. 
3. Certification gives you the confidence to ask questions, to challenge the data, to understand the customer and to know what is achievable with what you have. This together with the knowledge and experience helps defeat that Imposter Syndrome that seems to plague us all.

Working within IT, we are committed to learning every day, to pushing ourselves to stay current and enjoying the thrill of not only a new shiny badge, but new skills that we can use within our every day careers.

Resources I used to study:

These are not resources I used to learn Power BI, those are too many to list here, but these are specifically what I used to revise for the exam.