Microsoft has just done away with another batch of D365 & Power Platform certifications….how valuable are they anyway?…
Microsoft just retired another wave of Dynamics 365 and Power Platform certifications.
Power Platform Solution Architect Expert and Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Apps Solutions Architect Expert were both retired at the end of June.
Field Service Functional Consultant Associate and Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate just retired this month.
Power Automate RPA Developer Associate is gone too, with no direct replacement listed at all.
If a certification can disappear or get renamed every other year, just how important is it really, or more importantly, how much of a barometer for talent should it be for you in comparing candidates against each other?
Here’s the honest question: is the cert really the thing that matters, or is it the hands-on experience underneath it, the person who’s actually sat through a dozen implementations, worked the integrations that broke in production, managed the go-live that didn’t go according to plan, and learned what the documentation doesn’t tell you?
I know many consultants with every conceivable certification available who wouldn’t hold a candle to some industry veterans who either don’t hold any current certification at all or hardly bothered to take any certification exams to begin with.
A certification tells you someone passed a test on a specific day. It doesn’t tell you how they handle a data migration that’s gone sideways at 11pm, or how they think through a messy multi-entity integration. Experience tells you that.
None of this means certifications don’t matter. They’re a reasonable signal, especially early in someone’s career. But when Microsoft is retiring and renaming them this fast, they’re a floor, not the whole picture.
The number of deployments someone’s actually been through still tells you more.
Curious where others land on this: when you’re hiring or staffing a Dynamics or Power Platform role, how much do you actually weight the current cert versus the track record behind it?
Power Platform Solution Architect Expert and Dynamics 365 Finance & Operations Apps Solutions Architect Expert were both retired at the end of June.
Field Service Functional Consultant Associate and Power Platform Functional Consultant Associate just retired this month.
Power Automate RPA Developer Associate is gone too, with no direct replacement listed at all.
If a certification can disappear or get renamed every other year, just how important is it really, or more importantly, how much of a barometer for talent should it be for you in comparing candidates against each other?
Here’s the honest question: is the cert really the thing that matters, or is it the hands-on experience underneath it, the person who’s actually sat through a dozen implementations, worked the integrations that broke in production, managed the go-live that didn’t go according to plan, and learned what the documentation doesn’t tell you?
I know many consultants with every conceivable certification available who wouldn’t hold a candle to some industry veterans who either don’t hold any current certification at all or hardly bothered to take any certification exams to begin with.
A certification tells you someone passed a test on a specific day. It doesn’t tell you how they handle a data migration that’s gone sideways at 11pm, or how they think through a messy multi-entity integration. Experience tells you that.
None of this means certifications don’t matter. They’re a reasonable signal, especially early in someone’s career. But when Microsoft is retiring and renaming them this fast, they’re a floor, not the whole picture.
The number of deployments someone’s actually been through still tells you more.
Curious where others land on this: when you’re hiring or staffing a Dynamics or Power Platform role, how much do you actually weight the current cert versus the track record behind it?
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