Passed TOGAF 9 Level 2

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Woohoo!! Officially an architect! I was freaking out because all of TOGAf hasn't solidified in my head yet. I didn't study at all for 2 weeks after the course. I started studting on Friday, and went till all day Saturday until late Sat night. Went on Sunday for the exam, and got 80%.. woohoo.

I took both Level 1 and Level 2 together. Both times (after finishing level 1 and level 2), I was clutching my head sure that I failed, and it took me ahead.. Woohoo! They probably have a video of me clutching my head for 10 seconds and then going YES!!!

I figured out couple of tricks during the exam. They give you a single piece of erasable paper when you go in. During Level 1, for every question that I answered I made note of how confident I was about the answer. I noted down whether I was very confident/partially guessing/flipping a coin. This allowed me to revisit the "partially guessing" answers while reviewing the answers. I knew that if I felt like I was flipping a coin, there was no use revisiting the question, I would be wasting a lot of time debating with myself. So, during the review phase, I skipped over the questions in the confident and flipping-the-coin category, and spent a good 20 minutes thinking about the partially guessing answers. Before starting the review, I had 22 confident/12 guesses/ 8 flipping the coin. After 20 minutes, I got it to 26 confident/6 guesses/10 flipping the coin. I got 31 right!


During the Level 2 exam, I was usually ambivalent about 2 answers. As I went through the exam, I kept making note of the 2 best answers. This gave me a chance to go back and focus on the 2 best answers. I got 33/40, which was like awesome for me!!. It probably means I got the 1 2 pt answer, 2 3pt answers and 5 5pt answers! I would have been happy with 24.

[Chan Ag]

Congrats, Jayesh.

[Ramnathan Ravindran]

Congrats Mate

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Congrats Jayesh!

[Kj Reddy]

Congrats Jayesh!

[Winston Gutkowski]

So ... Beers are on you, right?

Hearty congrats.

Winston

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

Thanks everyone. I would get the beers, but before getting the beers, we have to first scope out who is drinking the beers, then we need to decide how much we are drinking, then we need to assess our capability to consume the beers, then we need to figure out how will we know when we are too drunk......

[Joe San]

Congratulations!

[Jayadev Pulaparty]

Jayesh A Lalwani wrote:Thanks everyone. I would get the beers, but before getting the beers, we have to first scope out who is drinking the beers, then we need to decide how much we are drinking, then we need to assess our capability to consume the beers, then we need to figure out how will we know when we are too drunk......

Congrats mate. You already seem to apply some of your TOGAF skills (capability assessment), unintentionally

[Sunderam Goplalan]

Congrats Jayesh

[Jayadev Pulaparty]

Jayesh:

From an open book standpoint, which document will be provided to us by the testing center. I would like to understand the structure of the same so that any lookup needed can be optimized. TOGAF study guide material says "At Prometric test centers the reference book is built into the examination". Is this document available on the TOGAF site?

Also, please let me know any pattern that you adopted in dealing with big scenarios, like to skip them and come back towards the end, etc. Was 90min time limit sufficient?

I'm reading the entire Part II study guide from Togaf and would like to dive into the questions after that.

Thanks.

[Jayesh A Lalwani]

The TOGAF reference manual is available as a PDF in the test software. There is a button on the the screen that says "reference". Clicking that takes you to the reference manual. You have find capability in the software. I think it's just a basic adobe PDF reader


The strategy that I used is that I used multiple passes through the test. In the first pass, for each question, I read the questions very well, and then I marked the 2 bad answers from the 2 good ones. Out of the 2 good ones, I picked the one I was most sure about. Also, I marked what was my degree of confidence in my answer. Then, in the second pass, I spent time thinking about the questions I wasn't sure about. Also, looked up the manual for those questions. I didn't remember what each TOGAF artifact was used for. So I had to look it up those artifacts to check whether they did what they did what I thought they did. Third pass, I just sanity checked all my answers. I spent some time dithering on questions where the 2 good answers were very close.

I used this strategy because the way the scoring system works is that picking the second best answer on all questions guarantees you a pass. If you pick the best answer, you are basically getting bonus points. So, in my first pass I wanted to get to a point where I was confident that I had picked at least the second best answer on all the questions. I wanted to "finish" the exam once without getting stuck on a particular question, even if I wouldn't have cracked a high score. This way if I get stuck on a question/had a panic attack, I could have just said f*ck it and gone to the next one. The next 2 passes basically were aimed at improving my answers. I knew I was more likely to pass at this point, so I was more relaxed which gave me a chance to think about the answers

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Jayadev Pulaparty wrote:Was 90min time limit sufficient?

If you are familiar with the manual, it is plenty of time. See my signature for the strategy I used on part 2.

[Jayadev Pulaparty]

Thanks Jayesh and Jeanne for the insights. I went through Jeanne's signature URL as well on Part II experiences.

Yes. The key is about familiarity with the reference material.

Please let me know if this is the exact document that is provided - https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/PublicationDetails.jsp?catalogno=I112. This is also referred to as Togaf 9.1 "The Book" on the OpenGroup website.

Regards.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Jayadev Pulaparty wrote:Please let me know if this is the exact document that is provided - https://www2.opengroup.org/ogsys/jsp/publications/PublicationDetails.jsp?catalogno=I112. This is also referred to as Togaf 9.1 "The Book" on the OpenGroup website.

Yes, that is the document.