TOGAF 9 certification consists of two multiple choice exams:

  • TOGAF 9 Foundation
  • TOGAF 9 Certified

The Foundation exam is a multiple choice exam which tests the knowledge of concepts defined in the TOGAF standard. Most questions are one liners asking you to choose the right option. There is ONLY one correct answer. There are 40 questions and you get 1 hour to finish. Pass marks are 55%

TOGAF 9 Certified (part 2) exam is a open book exam where you get the access to the TOGAF 9 standard. The documenation is in PDF format and can be searched. It is a scenario based exam and tests the candidate’s ability to apply the TOGAF standard in real life scenarios. There are only 8 questions and you get 90 minutes to answer those. However the scenarios mentioned in the exams are extremely lengthy and sometimes the answers too can be pretty long so 11 minutes per questions is not that long of a time. Pass marks are 60%.

Both exams can be taken in any order or in a combined test. The combined exam saves you some money so if you are spending from your own pocket, keep that in mind.

Though you can give the exams in any order, however in order to get the certification badge, both exams have to be cleared.

More details can be found at https://www.opengroup.org/certifications/togaf-individual-certification

Exam Preparation 

I registered on the open group website and downloaded the PDF standard. Both exams are all about how deeply you know the standard. I went for the part 1 preparation first thinking I wanted to take both exams separately. However during the prepation I decided to go for the combined exam as when you go for part 2 questions, part 1 concepts are revised. I utilized my lunch hour for the preparation. That was the only time I used to prepare for this exam.

I went through the exam syllabus mentioned in the link above and went through sections defined the TOGAF Standard. 2 weeks before the exam, I bought the quizzerwiz app and used that for mock tests preparation. It can be found here https://www.quizzerwiz.com/togaf-foundation-exam-preparation It is pretty good value. The sample exams on the open group site are decent too and should be used.

ADM is the backbone of the exam and TOGAF 9 standard and You should know it, in and out in order to clear the exam. The Input and output of each phase of ADM should be understood clearly. For part 2, ADM Guidelines and Techniques section is extremely important as it provide guidelines on how to use the ADM.

Tips

  • I, as a non native English speaker found the language used in the standard sometimes confusing initially. The TOGAF standard is very specific about the words it uses and that is also the case with exams. So pay attention to the words being used in the questions.
  • Though the Part 2 exam is an open book exam, you can’t only rely on searching the keywords in the specification. The specification is provided as a reference and you should know what you are looking for, then only it works.
  • In part 2, you get 5 marks for the best option, 3 for the second best and 1 for the third. There are no marks for the incorrect option so be sure you find the distractor first and correctly.
  • The scenarios are extremely big so try to go through them quickly. Make note of the problems being mentioned in the exam. There may be multiple issue being mentioned in the question. So choose the option which solves all those problems.

ADM is all about iterations and you will need a lot of iterations to feel comfortable with the specification, so keep at it 😉 

Resources Used:

  1. Togaf 9 Standard
  2. Togaf Study guide for Foundation Exam
  3. Quizzerwiz app for Togaf Foundation exam
  4. Sample Practice tests from Open Group

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Author: Rahul Tyagi is a veteran in IT and Principal Engineer at Aer Lingus. You can find him on LinkedIn.