Taking Microsoft Certified Professional Exams

Take the first step toward improving your career with a Microsoft Certification. Certification validates your expertise with Microsoft products and platforms, reveals your job-related experience, and establishes your technical problem-solving skills—opening a wider spectrum of employment opportunities.

You may find it helpful to understand how Microsoft exams are developed and the varieties of exam formats you may encounter. At Microsoft, we follow rigorous procedures to ensure our certifications are relevant, respected, and highly valued within the IT community. The Microsoft Certification team continually monitors industry trends and adjusts exams and standards accordingly, developing new exams and retiring others to make sure that certification requirements keep pace with rapidly changing technologies.

Explore the phases of the exam development lifecycle—including beta exams, new exams, and retired exams—and discover how exams are created to ensure relevance, validity, and reliability.

Microsoft Certification exam policies are designed to protect the value of your certification, your investment in the certification process, and the integrity of confidential Microsoft information and Microsoft intellectual property. We are invested in helping you succeed. By communicating our policies, we strive to help you understand all of the rules, regulations, and available special assistance so you are supported throughout the exam process.

Review Microsoft exam policies in the following categories.