The IFPUG Certification Commitee has announced that the Automated CFPS Exam pilot is in progress with a target date for having the Exam available is July 14th. IFPUG will send out an email on the 14th to confirm that registration is open.The CFPS Exam will be available in English only to start. Planning is in progress for Brasilian Portuguese, Italian, Korean, Japanese…and the list goes on. When we have firm plans for the various languages we will communicate that via email and the IFPUG bulletin board.

 The following is an extract from several postings on the IFPUG Bulletin board - by the Certificaiton Committee

The Automated CFPS Exam is essentially the same as the paper-based CFPS Exam. However, one of the biggest differences is the simple fact that the Exam is now in electronic format. And that means that no matter where you’re taking the Automated CFPS Exam, whichever Test Center in whatever country, EVERYTHING about the Exam is electronic....

The CPM, Quick Reference Guides and a pop-up calculator will be available on-line during the exam.

You may NOT bring any tools, paper or reference materials with you to the Exam. This includes, but is not limited to, paper, pencils, pens, calculators, CPM, Quick Reference Guides, and translation dictionaries. These items will NOT be allowed into any Test Center.

The Test Center should have a secure area for you to store your purse, cell phone or other personal items. Plan to leave all non-essential items at home.

The format of the automated exam will be very similar to the paper-based exam. For the automated exam, instead of an exam packet and an answer sheet, you'll have questions displayed on the screen one at a time, along with a single answer box for that question.

You can mark any question for review by using the mark/unmark button at the bottom of the screen.

You can also use the review button at the bottom of the screen to see a listing of all your answers. You'll see which questions have been answered, which remain unanswered, and which have been marked.

If you prefer pencil and paper over using a calculator, you can use the erasable pen and pad (usually an 8 1/2 by 11 white board and fine
marker) provided by your test center.

The reference materials are on demand pop-ups. You can use the reference button to access the CPM, quick reference guide, and weights/complexity card at any time. The reference display is a single window, with a drop-down list to jump between documents. There is also a word search facility you can use in each document.

There will be a fifteen minute tutorial to show you these various buttons and pop-ups, and how to use them.

Your keyboard, mouse and monitor will be industry standard. Actual models will vary from site to site. The test environment is completely controlled by the testing software - it is not a free-form environment such as Windows.

Certification does not provide practice exams or demos, since the content of a practice would be too similar to the actual exam. Also, in the case of the automated exam, the testing software is proprietary to our provider, Prometric, and can't be used outside the actual test environment.

Here's a description of how the Case Section will work in the automated environment.

The Case Section contains two types of question sets. One type of question set asks you to identify function types and the other question set asks you to determine the complexity for a group of function types.

Each question set will have text and graphics displayed on the left side of the screen describing a scenario. The answer boxes for the question set will be displayed on the right side of the screen. There will be a statement at the end of each question specifying the action you should take, e.g. identify the data function types for Application X or determine the complexity of the transactional function type for Project Y.

The answer boxes for identification question sets will list the names of several possible function types that may fit the scenario and the specified action. Each possible function type will have a radio button set for you to select the type or not applicable (N/A). For example, you may be asked to identify the transactional function types for Project A. Project A updated the Add Data and Query Data transactions, and added a hard coded List Data drop-down. For Add Data you would select the EI radio button, for Query Data the EQ radio button, and for List Data the N/A radio button.

The answer boxes for complexity question sets will list the function types to be evaluated. Each function type will have a radio button set for you to select low, average or high complexity. For example, you may be asked to determine the complexity for Report One in Application B. The scenario text tells you that Report One summarizes product sales using data from the Sales Detail and Region data functions. The Report One graphic shows sixteen pieces of user data. For Report One you would select the Average radio button.

For more information about the Automated Exam, check out the Helpful Hints document on the IFPUG Certification web page under the Automated CFPS Exam heading, http://www.ifpug.org/certification.

For more information about the Automated Exam, check out the documents on the IFPUG Certification web page under the Automated CFPS Exam heading, http://www.ifpug.org/certification. The Automated CFPS Exam Helpful Hints, Automated CFPS Exam FAQ, and Automated CFPS Exam Day Rules documents provide great information about the taking the Exam in the automated world.