Skills measured by the exam

Envisioning the Solution
Develop a solution concept.
Analyze the feasibility of the solution. Analyze the business feasibility of the solution. Analyze the technical feasibility of the solution. Analyze available organizational skills and resources.
Analyze and refine the scope of the solution project.
Identify key project risks.

Gathering and Analyzing Business Requirements
Gather and analyze business requirements. Analyze the current business state. Analyze business processes. Analyze the organizational structure, both current and projected. Analyze vertical market position and industry position. Analyze personnel and training needs. Analyze the organizational political climate. Analyze business reach or scope. Analyze current and future regulatory requirements. Analyze business requirements for the solution. Identify business requirements. Identify dependencies, both inside and outside the company. Identify features of the solution. Define design goals, such as extensibility requirements. Define data requirements, types, and flows. Create data flow diagrams.
Gather and analyze user requirements. Identify use cases. Identify usage scenarios for each use case. Identify globalization requirements. Identify localization requirements. Identify accessibility requirements.
Gather and analyze operational requirements. Identify maintainability requirements. Identify scalability requirements. Identify availability requirements. Identify reliability requirements. Identify deployment requirements. Identify security requirements.
Gather and analyze requirements for hardware, software, and network infrastructure. Identify integration requirements. Analyze the IT environment, including current and projected applications and current and projected hardware, software, and network infrastructure. Analyze the impact of the solution on the IT environment.

Developing Specifications

Transform requirements into functional specifications. Considerations include performance, maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, deployability, security, and accessibility.

Transform functional specifications into technical specifications. Considerations include performance, maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, deployability, security, and accessibility.

Select a development strategy.

Select strategies for auditing and logging.
Select strategies for error handling.
Select strategies for integration.
Select strategies for globalization.
Select strategies for localization.
Select strategies for data storage.
Select strategies for state management.
Include constraints in the development plan to support business rules. Constraints include data validation.

Select a deployment strategy.

Select strategies for deployment, such as coexistence strategies.
Select strategies for licensing.
Select strategies for data migration.

Select a security strategy.

Select strategies to help ensure data privacy, such as encryption, signing, and sealing.
Select strategies to help ensure secure access.

Select an operations strategy.

Select strategies for data archiving and data purging.
Select strategies for upgrades.
Create a support plan.

Create a test plan.
Create a user education plan.

Creating the Conceptual Design

Create a conceptual model of business requirements or data requirements.

Transform external information into elementary facts.
Apply a population check to fact types.
Identify primitive entity types in the conceptual model.
Apply uniqueness constraints to the conceptual model.
Apply mandatory role constraints to the conceptual model. Add value constraints, set‑comparison constraints, and subtype constraints to the conceptual model.
Add ring constraints to the conceptual model.

Validate the conceptual design.

Creating the Logical Design
Create the logical design for the solution. Create the logical design for auditing and logging. Create the logical design for error handling. Create the logical design for exception handling. Create the logical design for integration. Create the logical design for globalization. Create the logical design for localization. Create the logical design for security. Create the logical design for data privacy. Options include encryption, signing, and sealing. Include constraints in the logical design to support business rules. Create the logical design for the presentation layer, including the user interface (UI). Create the logical design for services and components. Create the logical design for state management. Create the logical design for synchronous or asynchronous architecture.
Create the logical data model. Define tables and columns. Normalize tables. Define relationships. Define primary and foreign keys. Define the XML schema.
Validate the proposed logical design. Review the effectiveness of the proposed logical design in meeting business requirements. Business requirements include performance, maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, deployability, security, and accessibility. Validate the proposed logical design against usage scenarios. Create a proof of concept for the proposed logical design.

Creating the Physical Design
Select the appropriate technologies for the physical design of the solution.
Create the physical design for the solution. Create specifications for auditing and logging. Create specifications for error handling. Create specifications for physical integration. Create specifications for security. Specifications can apply to strategies for physical data privacy, such as encryption, signing, and sealing. Include constraints in the physical design to support business rules. Design the presentation layer, including the UI and online user assistance. Design services and components. Design the data flow between services Design state management. Define the look-up data and the configuration data used by the application.
Create the physical design for deployment. Create deployment specifications, which can include coexistence and distribution. Create licensing specifications. Create data migration specifications. Design the upgrade path.
Create the physical design for maintenance. Design application monitoring.
Create the physical design for the data model. Create an indexing specification. Partition data. Denormalize tables.
Validate the physical design. Review the effectiveness of the proposed physical design in meeting the business requirements. Business requirements include performance, maintainability, extensibility, scalability, availability, deployability, security, and accessibility. Validate use cases, scenario walk-throughs, and sequence diagrams. Create a proof of concept for the proposed physical design.

Creating Standards and Processes
Establish standards. Standards can apply to development documentation, coding, code review, UI, and testing.
Establish processes. Processes include reviewing development documentation, reviewing code, creating builds, tracking issues, managing source code, managing change, managing release, and establishing maintenance tasks.
Establish quality and performance metrics to evaluate project control, organizational performance, and return on investment.