I recently failed my CCNP SWITCH exam. Only by a few marks ( < 5%) but enough nonetheless. At first I was upset but now I've come to realize that I wasn't thinking the right way about a lot of the questions, particularly the simulations.
Previously, I had seen sims in Cisco exams which clearly stated what the end goal was in technical terms but this exam was more about giving a set of requirements and letting you figure out what was required. During the exam I wasn't thinking through the requirements at all, just my own set of technical goals, e.g. must get this ether channel up.
Having had time to think about, I now realize that this comes down to my lack of experience (despite doing Cisco networking for 8 years) of doing design work. I have never sat down at a planning meeting with a client to determine their requirements, not have I been involved in a peer review process in an engineering team.
My networking role is just me looking after a large network (> 800 virtual users) all by myself, with no other network engineers and no 'client'.
The end result is I know my network very well but I have never had to plan or design from scratch which showed up in the exam.
I want to be a good engineer but planning and design are hard to study for unless you've had the exposure.
Never fear, I will keep at it and I hope now I at least better understand what is required of these types of questions in the exam.
No comments:
Post a Comment