I spent last week teaching the MOC 50028 - Managing Operations Manager 2007. In all fairness I must also admit that I work for an organization that has a competing class (a 4 day custom Operations Manager BootCamp that is NOT the MOC). One of our Canadian customers asked us to deliver the MOC class specifically, so we did.
What a disaster this class is.
First off the Class title is Managing Operations Manager, however 60+% of the class revolves around install and config. There is a small section that talks about management packs and health modeling, however it doesn't go in to enough detail. Being a consultant as well as an MCT I was able to augment the class material with my own knowledge, but it was very obvious to the students that the class was very weak in certain areas (and it also reflected in their evaluation scores). Our 4 day bootcamp covers in the first two days, what the MOC covers in 5. The material Infront Consulting covers in the last 2 days (our Fundamentals class) is touched on very lightly if at all in the MOC.
The worse part of this MOC are the labs. The lab launcher crashes regularly and when the launcher crashes it removes the .vmc files which in turns can ruin the labs (which results in making the students start from scratch). I am teaching this class again next week and luckily have a few work arounds to put in place, but as an instructor I shouldn't have to use class time to figure out how to fix labs. If instructors don't have a lot of Virtual Server experience I can see this class being a huge problem for them.
The class material also has quite a few typos, wrong references and instructions, causing confusion among students that are seeing this product for the first time. I would think being that this is revision B of the class that these types of problems would be fixed. Since they aren't I can see why many students aren't happy with the class.
If you or your organization is looking for true Operations Manager training, taught by consultants that are out in the field using the product, go to http://www.infrontconsulting.com/training.php
If the MOC was a decent class I would not blog about it, as like I said it is in competition with our Bootcamp., Considering what a disaster this MOC class is I would like to see companies and students spend what training funds they have on a class that will leave them feeling like they learned something they can take back to the office and actually use.
