Some DEV-501 Assignments/Essays Cancelations Reported
January 6th, 2010
A few people (mostly NE US and UK) have emailed me that they received the following notification from Salesforce.com Training and Certification sometime around Christmas:
You recently registered for the Salesforce.com Certified Force.com Advanced Developer Programming Assignment and Essay. Due to seasonably high demand for the Force.com experts who will be evaluating your assignments, we are postponing the January/February assignment window until further notice.
I emailed Theresa at Salesforce.com and asked for more information. It looks like only some people are affected (not sure the rhyme or reason) but here is what she sent me:
Why did you postpone this assignment/essay opportunity?
Our Force.com experts are in high demand and we cannot do the assignment judging without them. Due to recent resourcing changes, we were concerned that we would not be able to evaluate assignments and respond to our candidates in a timely manner. Candidates invest a lot of time in the assignment, and we did not want them to be frustrated by the long response time our resource availability would cause. Therefore, we opted to postpone the assignment/essay opportunity until we could ensure a quality evaluation and timely response.
When will the next registration window open?
We do not have the next registration window scheduled. Candidates will be notified when the next window opens.
Did you postpone for all candidates?
No. Based on resource availability, we chose to allow customer candidates to complete the assignment.
What about the exam – are you postponing that too?
Yes. We will put the exam portion of the Force.com Advanced Developer program on “hold” until we develop our plan for our next window. This will ensure that we do not build a large backlog of candidates and potentially cause frustration that an assignment/essay window is not open. During this time, we will also be completing our annual certification exam-item review so that all exams and the program are re-vamped prior to re-opening.
Is this credential going away? Are you replacing it with an exam-only credential?
No. The Force.com Advanced Developer credential is still an important part of our certification program. We will be giving candidates who have already passed the exam a designation and logo that enables them to demonstrate that they are in the process of earning the Force.com Advanced Developer credential, but this is not a replacement or a new certification credential.
What should I tell people who are interested in the Force.com Advanced Developer credential?
If a person is interested in entering the program when we re-open it, they should send an email to certification@salesforce.com requesting to receive notification when they can register for the exam.
Categories: Salesforce
Thanks for this post Jeff. I tried to register for the exam yesterday and webassessor just has a message saying ‘In Maintenance’. Good to get a bit more background.
Thanks for the information Jeff. I will prepare for the exam in the meantime.
Scratch my comment our your other post Jeff – this just answered all my questions. Bummer, but at least the certification isn’t going away.
Jeff,
I just passed the exam portion, and am wondering if you know anything about the timetable for getting the Assignment/Essay portion. I realize this is an old post, but wondering if you’ve heard anything about this certificaiton since then? I know a few folks who have been waiting almost a year for this.
Trying to figure out how long I’m going to have to wait to get the next portion.
[...] – der Programmierübung – nicht nachzukommen. Das geht zumindest aus der Emailanfrage an Salesforce.com Training and Certification, die Jeff Douglas in seinem Blog [...]
@Jeff,
I’m trying to take the Advanced Cert. Exam. Webassessor offers NO dates available even months into the future, and Certification@SalesForce.com has not responded at all to my eMail requests. Any idea what’s up with the certification process?