TOGAF foundation exam tips and experience

I passed my TOGAF 9.1 foundation exam on 06th May 2018. In this article i am going to talk about my experience of the exam and how anyone looking to clear the TOGAF foundation exam should plan their study.

Preparation time and style

It took me about 2 months to prepare for TOGAF foundation exam. I read the TOGAF Foundation study guide cover to cover (its about 200 pages), the first time to slowly digest the information and the second time to quickly write down and memorize the key terminology. After the first reading i was not having much confidence and it all seemed like a deep blue sea. Thankfully after second reading and writing down the key concepts and terminolgy in my notes, it all started to sink in. Then i took the 2 practice exams which are part of the official study guide and consistently started scroing within range of 32-35 out of 40.

Honestly the content seemed boring during the first read but it got interesting after that and i started to visualize the Architecture development method. Also my work experience as a technical product owner helped in visualizing all this. Moreover, i am a visual learner so i guess that kicked in once i became familiar with the terms of EA.

Exam pattern

The exam is a MCQ based with 40 questions in total and duration of the exam is 1 hour. I got 31 out of 40 in the exam. Questions are not very lengthy and it took me about 25 minutes to complete the exam. The sentence and wording of the exam is quite simple and easy to understand even if you are not a native english speaker. I found it helpful to quickly scan through the questions at the same time answering those which i was 100% sure of. You can visit the questions later so that is not a problem.

Resources for practice

I found the TOGAF Foundation study guide to be more than enough for preparation. There was nothing out of this book and if you read it cover to cover you are likely to pass. There is no need to spend humongous amount of money on training or any other preparatory material apart from the official study guide.

Real exam experience

I found the questions on the real exam just a little bit more tricky than those in the study guide.
Also there were 2 or 3 tricky questions where i was confused. All in all, it is easy to pass if you have the ADM phases fully digested into your head.

Do not try for rote learning, rather try to understand logically why you should do a particular activity in a given phase of ADM. Ironically, it helps if you do not have much experience into EA as you come with little baggage of your own. That way, you follow TOGAF recommendation almost as a religion and because the exam expects you to answer the questions based on exactly how things will be handled in TOGAF.

Results

Exams are conducted by Pearson VUE and the results are not immediately available , unlike other Computer based tests (CBT). The test administrator told me it is due to security reasons and score card is shared by Pearson VUE with Open group and they validate the results , process it and then will trigger a mail to your registered email id. I got the final results within a day so no worries there.