The Role of Professional Certification
Why do you need a certification?
The is no doubt, that data is a key asset for the organizations and it is important to treat it right in order to get completive advantage. Tableau is a best of breed technology on the market that allows us to work with data, slice it and do complex data analysis on the fly. However, it requires us to understand the key concept of data analytics and we should know how to “drive” Tableau in order to deliver value. Moreover, we are working in competitive environment and we should constantly improve our skills and learn new technologies, new features and data analysis methods to be on the edge.
In this post, we will learn why it is important to master Tableau and pass the official Tableau Certification. In addition, we will discover that available certification types as well as share additional resource to master Tableau and prepare for successful certification.
TL;DR: Should I pass Tableau Certification? Yes, you should, 100%.
Why Certification is matter?
If we look into Wikipedia and see what does certification means:
Certification refers to the confirmation of certain characteristics of an object, person, or organization. This confirmation is often, but not always, provided by some form of external review, education, assessment, or audit.
In other words, it is the confirmation of our knowledge. In case of data analytics and information technology, it refers to our knowledge of a particular tool or methodology. In our case it is Tableau Desktop.
Certification is checking not only our Tableau knowledge, but it is evaluating our ability to comfortable work with data and communicate with people by using powerful visualization techniques. Moreover, it requires understanding of overall Business Intelligence solution and its role in organization. On the screen below, is high-level diagram for the typical organization that is using Tableau:
This diagram has three layers:
- Source Layer — this layer has source systems, it could be business applications like Sales Force, files, transactional databases and so on.
- Storage Layer — this layer consolidates information into Data Warehouse and in some cases leverage Big Data solutions like Data Lake, Hadoop, Spark.
- Access Layer — this is the area of Tableau (BI tool), where business users can access data from storage layer or in some cases in source layers.
Idea, behind Tableau is to democratize access for the data. In other words, business users will use rich Tableau functionality to slice and dice data, connect various systems, databases, files, visualize data, build dashboards and explore the data.
This picture clears tells us what is the scope of exam. As a professional Tableau Developer, you should be able to know how to connect data, explore it, slice and dice. Often, you have to build Dashboard or tell a story with the data. It is good to know the best practices of data visualization in order to make your work effective and impactful. In some cases, we should calculate new metrics and leverage Tableau Table Calculations or Level of Details. Sometimes, parameters can help us to filter the data and add self-service functionality. Finally, we should have some knowledge of statistics and know how to use built-in functionality for forecasting, trend lines and clustering. As well as, know about Tableau Server and how to share and publish our work.
Let’s try to understand, what is the reason for certification and why it is goes beyond than just “nice to have”. There are many reasons, why data professionals are obtaining official certification. We can identify at least 3 top reasons:
1. Demonstrate to knowledge of subject and prove that skills are up to date
2. Requirements for employer
3. Requirements for the customer
Demonstrate to knowledge of subject and prove that skills are up to date
First of all, certification gives people stamp of approval that company is looking for. It means that the persons who passed the certification exam can claim that they really do know what they are doing. Hiring managers usually are looking for somebody that’s certified, because they can be confident that they’ve made a good decision. As a result, if you really want to differentiate yourself, if you want to be able to prove to the wider world that you’ve actually mastered the product, that you really do have the skills, and set yourself apart, then it’s well worth the time and effort to study and practice, to train to take the certification exams and eventually pass them, so that you have that brand, that stamp of approval that says not only am I a Tableau user, and not only I am savvy, but I’m actually able to prove that I’m savvy. It feels wonderful when you feel like you’ve done a good job, and it feels great to know that you’re a part of something that is absolutely transforming the business.
Requirements for employer
Often, employers have strong requirements for Tableau Skills. They want to hire Tableau Professional and they will set a baseline with Tableau certification. It means, in order to pass interview or even get a chance for the interview, we should have a certificate.
Sometimes, organizations decide to invest into the workforce and allow everyone to get Tableau training and pass certification exam. It is very good practice and organizations are willing to invest into their employees.
Requirements for the customer
Sometime, we can see the opposite situation. The organization wants to hire external freelances or consulting company. Their main requirement could be the availability Tableau certification. Moreover, Tableau company requires all consulting partners to have certification in order to provide high quality service.
As a result, it doesn’t matter what is the reason behind the certification. It is obvious, that having certification is better than not having and it gives us advantage on the market. Moreover, it will guarantee that we have required skillset and Tableau knowledge and can do analytics job.
Tableau Certification Path
On the screen below there are five available certification exams:
Currently, Tableau offers us two paths:
- Tableau Desktop
2. Tableau Server
Let’s look to the summary table about the exam and it’s requirements and purpose:
In the table above, I specified the key parameters of exam. For example, for Tableau Desktop Certified Associate, we will have 2 hours and only 36 questions. Around 20 of questions will be hands on. It means, that you should use an available data set in order to answer the question. It means, that we can apply any technique, our main goal is to find the right answer and choose if from the available options. The rest questions are theoretical, and you will have plenty of time to check it with the internet. There are key topics that you should know before exam:
- Data Connection (Blending, Joins, Union, Pivot, Data Interpreter, Data Sources and so on)
- Organizing and Simplifying Data (Filters, Groups, Sets, Hierarchies)
- Field types (Dimension and Measures, Continuous and Discrete)
- Chart types
- Calculation Fields
- Table Calculations
- Level of Details
- Totals and Subtotals
- Mappings
- Analytics (Forecasting, Trend lines, Statistical summary card)
- Dashboards
I want to share my colleague and my story.
Certification stories
Below our journeys and stories of Tableau Certification.
Dmitry Anoshin, Tableau Desktop and Sever Qualified Certified.
“ I worked with Tableau since 2011. Most of the time, I was working on Data Warehouse projects and used Tableau as a primary BI tool. I didn’t spend much time on great visualization and complex calculations. Also, I was responsible for Tableau Server deployment and support. My employer never asked me to force Tableau certification and I didn’t spend time for preparation and didn’t want to risk to burn money in case of failure. Just recently, I was involved in Tableau communities and user groups and decided to pass the exam and cover the gap of my knowledge. After short preparation, I was able to pass Tableau Desktop Qualified Certification and Tableau Server Qualified Certification. It wasn’t easy and it took extra effort. But it is totally worth it. Now I feel myself more confident in my skills and my can demonstrate proof of my knowledge to my colleagues and employer. “
Gleb Makarenko, Tableau Desktop Qualified Associate Certified.
“I began using Tableau in 2018 and quickly fell in love with the intuit and ease of use of the software. I was able to easily adapt to its interface and create powerful visualizations. I decided to get certified on Tableau software to receive proper credentials I could use on my resume, as well as learn intricacies that I wasn’t using at the time. With a bit of effort and research I was able to complete the examination and would recommend doing so for anyone who is serious in working with Tableau.”
Tableau Resources
There are many online and offline resources that able to help us master Tableau and pass the certification exam. The list below mentions the most helpful resources for Tableau Knowledge:
Tableau official resources:
- Free trainings — https://www.tableau.com/learn/training
- E-learning — https://www.tableau.com/learn/training/elearning
- Live Trainings — https://www.tableau.com/learn/live-training
- Classroom trainings — https://www.tableau.com/learn/classroom
- Tableau Official White papers — https://www.tableau.com/learn/whitepapers
- Tableau Blue Print — https://www.tableau.com/learn/data-culture
Tableau role-based trainings
Tableau launched 12 specialized learning paths aligned to Tableau roles across the organization, each role is designed to accelerate the proficiency of people who are working with data. The cost of 12 months access is 120$.
Tableau Books
- Tableau 2019 Cookbook by Dmitry Anoshin, Slaven Bogdanovic, and Teodora Matic
- Mastering Tableau 2019.1 by David Baldwin and Marleen Meier
- Learning Tableau 2019 Joshua N. Milligan
- Tableau Your Data Daniel G. Murray
- The Big Book of Dashboards by Andy Cotgreave, Jeffrey Shaffer, and Steve Wexler
- Practical Tableau by Ryan Sleeper
- Communicating with Tableau by Ben Johns
- Information Dashboard Design by Stephen Few
Blogs
- Points of Viz — The Tableau Desktop Certified Professional Exam Experience http://pointsofviz.com/the-tableau-desktop-certified-professional-exam-experience/
- VizWiz — http://www.vizwiz.com/
- Storytelling with Data http://www.storytellingwithdata.com/
- Information is Beautiful https://informationisbeautiful.net/
- Flowing Data http://flowingdata.com/
- Visualizing Data http://www.visualisingdata.com/
- Junk Charts http://junkcharts.typepad.com/
- The Pudding https://pudding.cool/
- The Atlas https://www.theatlas.com/
- Graphic Detail https://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail
- Tableau Blog https://www.tableau.com/about/blog
Tableau Practice
- Make Over the Monday — https://www.makeovermonday.co.uk/
- Workout Wednesday — http://www.vizwiz.com/p/workout-wednesday.html
- Iron Viz — https://www.tableau.com/iron-viz
PS at Rock Your Data we have only certified consultants in Tableau, AWS, Azure and GCP in order to deliver only high-end solutions and implement best-practices.
