Today, I’m going to pull some thoughts together regarding my main topic for the past 2 weeks – the time and effort involved in getting your CCVP cert – and then ask you to tell me if it’s worth it to you. The benefit side of the equation has so many aspects that differ from person to person, making the benefit tough to quantify. But today’s post wraps up my effort to put a number on the time involved – which begs the question about if the CCVP is worth that time, and if so, what are the reasons.
I’ll use the estimates for the QoS and CIPT exams from the last few days’ postings, and add in the other 3 exams. For the purposes of this post, I’ll focus on skills levels 1 and 2 again, ignoring levels 0 and 3 (see this post for more background on skill level definitions). I’ll also focus on the self-study path instead of taking a class.
Other than the QoS and CIPT exams, CCVP requires three other exams:
- CVOICE (Cisco Voice)
- GWGK (Gateways and Gatekeepers)
- TUC (Troubleshooting Unified Communications)
Like the QoS exam, both GWGK and TUV have an associated 5-day course, with the CVOICE exam having an associated 4-day course. TUC would seemingly require the most extra effort for both study and hands-on skill practice of all 5 of the exams. GWGK appears to be about as tough as QoS, so I’ll use the same numbers for both QoS and GWGK. Finally, CVOICE looks to be the easiest, so I’ll lower those numbers a bit. Pulling it all together, here’s a stab at quantifying the time:
So, even if you already know the CCVP topics, and have some skills, my estimates put the extra effort at around 400 hours. With just beginner-level skills, you’re popping over 600. In either case, it’s not something that you just show up for and go pass all the exams, unless you work with it pretty regularly and build those skills as a side-effect of your job. So, is it worth it? Does the amount of time surprise you at all? Am I way off? Feel free to comment here, and don’t forget to weigh in with last Tuesday’s survey.
