Agile Blueprint

Cisco said its Agile Blueprint is a modular approach to exam revisions that enables a continuous refresh of technologies covered by Cisco certifications. Instead of refreshing an exam every three years or so, Cisco will launch "minor releases" in certain areas to keep tracks up to date.

"For example, if you have a CCIE for our new data center [certification], normally we would plan for a major release in the span of about three years because we want to give people the time to really get there … In that three-year timeframe, data center technologies evolve even if the job isn't. So products become obsolete and new product come in," said Corno. "In-between those major releases, we want to do minor releases. That is what we refer to an Agile Blueprint. It's a set of minor releases touching the technologies behind the certification in-between major refreshes to keep the tracks more relevant and more updated."