My CCIE Lab Training Strategy

So time has come for me to share with you, how I did to plan my CCIE Lab training and which tools I have used for that.

 First of all, let´s look at some numbers regarding my CCIE Lab training:

•  1509,5 hours of training (including blogging but not the 10 days bootcamp from INE)
• 14 months training
• 2 weeks break
• 55 weeks of training (not including the 10 days bootcamp from INE)
• 26 as average hours training per week
• 49,5 as max hours training per week
• 50 Saturdays used for training with an average hours of 5,7
• 50 Sundays used for training with an average hours of 5,6 hours
• 150-200 hours used for blogging
• 3 attempts

 Before I started with my Lab training I did a 48 weeks training plan based on the one made by INE which can be found HERE.

For the 48 weeks training program, I have used MS Project to plan everything based on my start date (09/01/2012) and I have also changed a couple of things compare to the original training plan made by INE, where for example during the warm-up phase I took Multicast last instead of MPLS but it is up to you and how you feel with the different technologies. Otherwise the rest is very similar to the original INE training plan. The MS Project training plan is based on 20 hours of studying per week and has 2 weeks break. Also the CCIE INE 10 days bootcamp is included in the training plan. The training starts on Tuesday and end on Sunday. I attach the MS Project file HERE so you can use it to fit your own training plan.

Once I had everything in MS project, I did copy all in an Excel file so I could easily track my training and write what I did each day as well as how many hours I used every day. In this Excel file, I have also included ATC videos, workbooks Vol1, Vol2, Vol3, Vol4, Mock Labs, Blog topics, books and the blueprint so I could track my training all the way through. For example for ATC videos, all the ones I have seen are highlighted with blue. For the workbook Vol2 (Both TS and configuration), I have included which lab I have done and which ticket/task I have struggled with, also the total score for each lab is written as well as how much time it took me to complete each TS Vol2 labs. Regarding the blueprint, I have highlighted which topics, along my training, I was comfortable with and which ones I needed to review. Regarding the blogging section I wrote about which topics I have blogged about along my journey.

If you want, you can have a look at my final Excel training plan HERE but I will try to make it available for you guys as an empty Excel template file, so you can use it and adapt it to your training.

 You will see that originally, I had planned to study from Tuesday to Sunday but then I have also used Monday 🙂 It is a really tight and long program also because I needed three attempts to pass so I have accommodated the original training plan to fit with 3 attempts.

I think that it is really important to make a training plan as it helps you to keep the rhythm and you always know where you are and where you are going.

Thanks for reading.

/Laurent

CCIE R&S V4.0 INE Training Plan

CCIE R&S V4.0 MS Project Training Plan

CCIE R&S V4.0 Excel Training Plan