There are a number of different things that vendors have to take into consideration when they are planning the details of their certification programs. The fact is that sometimes little things get missed that can cause a great amount of confusion and bad feelings within the certification community. Take for example, the recent controversy around the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE). As a veteran network engineer, I’d like to address this situation and give some perspective to hopefully reassure those of you who are nervous about future announcements.
So what’s the deal?
Recently Cisco got into a bit of trouble with its CCIE Voice community because of the way that it announced, and initially introduced, the new CCIE Collaboration certification. For those who are not familiar with the issue being addressed, let’s do a little review.
The CCIE Voice certification has been around for some time and was initially introduced in a time when video and collaboration services were not fully mature. The intent was to build an expert level Cisco certification that covered all of the respective voice technologies that existed. With the evolution of voice, video and collaboration technologies, a change was required, in Cisco’s opinion, to diversify the subject areas that were covered in the certification track.
Now here comes the problem: When Cisco introduced the Cisco Collaboration certification it also released an announcement that it would retire the CCIE Voice certification. All the people who were preparing for the CCIE Voice written could take the exam up to November 20, 2013, and people preparing for CCIE Voice lab could take the exam up to February 13, 2014. After that, those individuals would have to take the CCIE Collaboration exams.
Cisco reacted, in a good way
The insinuation in these releases was that there was no direct track for those currently certified with CCIE Voice to achieve CCIE Collaboration without going through both the CCIE Collaboration written and lab exams. This led to an outcry in the CCIE Voice community, as those people who had the existing certification didn’t believe this was a fair certification path option. As a result, Cisco responded by announcing that it would be possible for certified CCIE Voice holders to directly obtain a CCIE Collaboration by only passing the CCIE Collaboration written exam.
The big thing to take away from this is that Cisco tends to listen to its certification communities. If there is some issue with a newly introduced exam or certification, it’s best to let your voice be heard so that Cisco can weigh the pros and cons of the proposed solutions.
You should always speak up
Now, I would tend to think that this concern should have been obvious to those at Cisco updating the certification track; but anyone who has been involved with a big project knows sometimes it’s hard to see the small things when you are so close to them. Sometimes it simply takes the community to speak up and let them know that they missed something.
The real lesson that I will reiterate here is that sometimes it only takes a few voices to change the course of a big project (or big company). In this case, a community came together to tell Cisco that something was overlooked, either in the clarity of its announcements or in its initial policy on existing certification holders. As certification holders, we not only rely on Cisco, but the company also relies on us to let it know what we expect and what we want from it. It is Cisco’s responsibility to take this information and form a plan to deliver, or to not.
Traditionally, Cisco has been rather exceptional when it comes to taking the pulse of its current and future certification holders and providing them with the tools to not only make the most of Cisco solutions, but also the most of their own abilities.
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