Nobody Fails AZ-104 Because of Azure
Picture an admin who works in the Azure portal every day. They build virtual machines, reset passwords, and fix network security group rules before lunch. They book AZ-104, study when there is time, and fail it.
The easy conclusion is that Azure is too big and the exam is too hard. However, I do not think that is what happened. The material is published, most of the training is free, and that same admin handles harder problems at work every week. What failed was the study plan, and in most cases there was never a plan to begin with.
In other words, nobody fails AZ-104 because of Azure.
The material is not the mystery
Microsoft tells you what is on the exam. The AZ-104 study guide lists the skills measured across five areas, which are identities and governance, storage, compute, virtual networking, and monitoring. Microsoft Learn has free training for all of it, there is a free practice assessment, and there are more videos, labs, and practice tests out there than anyone could finish.
So the problem is rarely a lack of material. If anything there is too much of it, and that is where people get lost. They watch a video series from start to finish, feel productive, and never check what they watched against what the exam actually measures.
What actually goes wrong
No schedule — “I will study when I have time” turns into two hours one week and nothing the next.
No record — after a month you cannot say which skills you have covered and which ones you have only heard about.
No measurement — a practice test gets taken once, the score gets a glance, and the missed questions never get reviewed.
No date — without an exam date on the calendar, there is no reason to study tonight instead of next week.
None of these have anything to do with Azure. They are the same reasons a project slips at work, and as engineers we already know how to fix a project that is slipping.
What a working study plan looks like
You would not run a migration without a checklist, a schedule, and a way to know when you are done, and the exam deserves the same treatment.
Turn the skills outline into a checklist, so you can see what is covered and what is left.
Book the exam first, then work backward from the date.
Set weekly study hours that you can actually keep, and put them on the calendar.
Log every session with what you studied and how long you spent on it.
Track every practice test score and write down the topics you missed, because the missed topics are next week’s plan.
None of this is complicated, however it only works if it is written down where you can see it.
Where to start this week
This is why I built the AZ-104 Study Planner. It is a printable PDF with a skills checklist, weekly and daily study logs, and a practice-test tracker, so the whole plan lives on paper in front of you. It is available in the OpStacks Etsy shop. If you want to try the idea first, the AZ-104 Weekly Study Log is a free single page from the planner.
Before you buy another course, write down your exam date and the hours you will study this week. Let me know what you think. I would also like to hear what your study routine looked like if you have already passed.