A Wild DevNet Certification Appeared! (part 2)

March 19, 2020 5 minute read

Study plan details from my preparation for the DEVASC exam

In this blog I’m going to detail how I approached the exam and the study materials, schedule, and mindset to pass this exam. Not every format of training material works for everyone, so I’ll also include resources that I have cursory knowledge of but seem to have promise.

Resources

To study for this exam I used Nick Russo’s study guide for the DevNet Associate. There was approximately 100 hours of study material in the guide. I went through all of the material in the guide, but I imagine if you have any background in automation or development you likely won’t need to review it all.

The portions of the guide that I thought were of the highest value, in terms of general knowledge, include Python Fundamentals, Clean Coding Principles, and Modern Web Security Patterns.

Python fundamentals was an excellent course that walked through the core of Python very quickly but thoroughly. If you already have experience thinking and writing programmatically, this course will get you up to speed on Python. If you don’t have experience, this course can be a little daunting due to the pace. My advice is to either slow down and don’t move on until you understand the concept or use other material that walks you through some basics first.

Clean Coding was a course that really helped me understand that while code is interpreted/compiled by computers it’s also read by other humans. And readability really matters. The course uses C# as the language for examples but the principles are portable.

Modern Web Security Patterns was a rad course that I almost skipped! I had done a lot of security reading in the months before I was preparing for the DevNet Associate exam and I thought I could get some time back by skimping a bit on security. The portion of my brain I’ve dedicated to security wouldn’t let me, though! It was a great course and it featured the awesome Troy Hunt. Well worth the time.

The other topics were covered well by DevNet learning labs, YouTube videos, and Nick’s own courses on Pluralsight. Overall by following Nick’s study guide the cost was minimized and the coverage was thorough.

After I passed the exam, I went back to the topics and read through about half of the Cisco Digital Learning Labs DevNet Associate course. This course is pretty great and I wish I had taken it before the exam. The course page says it has 64 hours of instruction and 20 hand-ons labs! The hand-ons on labs are particularly efficient, as they spin up with everything you need to lab the topic and you don’t have to deal with minutiae. The course is presented in written form and video. I really enjoyed the sections on software design.

CBTNuggets DevNet Associate course seems very promising for this exam too. Knox Hutchinson, Keith Barker, and Ben Finkel are all great trainers and the videos I watched were really great. They are great at breaking down complex topics into bite sized introductions that can really accelerate the beginning of your exploration with a topic.

There’s also a Cisco Press book that just came out on October 2, 2020. I have not read it but I looked through the table of contents. It seems to closely follow the exam topics. It has the features common to other Cisco books: chapter quizzes, practice exam, preparation checklists, and a study planner in the index.

Schedule

I think it’s very important to have a routine to rely on while studying for an exam. A routine combined with a study plan is the best way to actually get through all of the material for any exam.

Make sure to be kind to yourself, though. If you miss a study session because you have more important matters to handle like your health or family, do not beat yourself up. The aspect of a study schedule that matters is what you do 90% of the time. If you miss 10% of your study sessions for good reasons, I bet you’re going to still be well prepared.

I set aside 3-4 nights a week and 2-3 hours per night to study for this exam. I set up a recurring event on my calendar to keep me (and my family) straight on which days were study days. I negotiated with my family which days were study days and which days were play days. During the time I scheduled I executed the study plan top to bottom. It took about 2.5 months or so. I took a few detours to dive into topics I thought were particularly interesting but for the most part I stuck to the plan.

Mindset

This exam is not a networking exam. Do not expect any but the most basic of networking knowledge or skills to transfer. The body of knowledge for this exam speaks for itself and you can verify it in the exam topics. Around 50% of this exam is about general software development, design, deployment, and security. Around 35% of the exam is about software development on Cisco platforms. That’s 85% of the exam dedicated to software either generally or on Cisco platforms. This is a software development exam. :D

The remaining 15% is network fundamentals. If you come from an infrastructure background, you’ll likely not need to study much for this section. If you’re from a software background, you should review the topics.

A good mindset for approaching this body of knowledge is that of a software developer and creator. The tools and techniques tested on this exam are meant to be used to create solutions to business problems. This is an important mindset to adopt and I think it will help drive exploration of these topics.

Wrap up

If you’ve made it this far, thank you! I had a lot of fun studying these topics and I learned a lot! I hope something here is helpful for you and good luck on your journey.