TLDR: 1st attempt Pass, 2 weeks of prep, harder than expected, work experience was crucial, would not do anything differently.
Study Materials: Sybex Offical Study Guide (3rd Edition), and Practice Exams ($60 bundle on Amazon), LearnZApp Official CCSP Practice Questions/Exams ($20 one-time fee for 1 month)
Background: I hold CISSP, CISM, and a minor collection of CompTIA certs (including Cloud+). I've worked in InfoSec for ~9 years and cloud specifically for 2-3. My general approach is study guide + practice questions until I'm scoring 80%+ consistently on new question sets. I started on the CCSP as part of a broad ongoing goal to knock out 2 education milestones a year. I suspected this would not be a major lift due to working in the field and having previously completed the Cloud+ certification. I passed the CISSP in 2016 so it has been a minute since I have taken an ISC2 exam but I remembered the general format and strategy for filtering out 'incorrect' and 'correct' first and then honing in on the BEST answer.
Study: I read the OSG over the course of 1 week (~1 chapter a day + summary questions). Week 2 was just practice questions. I did ~300 new questions a day, moving on to the LearnZApp midweek. I opted for the one-time ~$20 access fee. Note: I thoroughly read and consider the explanations provided on both incorrect AND correct answers because you may get something right for the wrong reasons and it can honestly only strengthen your understanding for the extra 5 seconds it takes. All in all, I completed maybe 1500 total questions with a first-look average of ~80%. Historically, if I can take a fresh exam question set with >80%, I will pass the exam. I scheduled for Saturday, and spent Friday only doing question sets of the items I had gotten wrong on the first pass. I read posts on Reddit and ISC2 (like this one) for insights and recent feedback from exam takers - I can't say anything jumped out as particularly helpful or comforting.
Exam: I took the exam slowly. If I was doing 100 questions an hour in practice, I was doing 40 questions an hour on the exam. Extra attention to key words and eliminating obviously wrong answers. You can not go back on the exam. Plan accordingly. I completed the exam in a little over 3 hours with very low confidence. Passed. 🙂
I tally my answers as I go into "I know I got that right", "50/50 chance", and "Complete guess". By my own estimates, I was 100% confident on roughly half of the questions, 50/50 on a third, and the rest were best guess. I will say there were an abnormally high number of questions in that last category for me. Roughly ~17% the questions I either couldn't rule out wrong answers or had zero exposure to the technologies or concepts. This was surprising considering my profession, prior exams, and study materials. It definitely could be those "ungraded" test questions that were driving that percentage. I calculated my estimated score using the tally sheet, using 1, .5, and .25 multipliers for each category. My guess was that I scored a 107.5/150, which would have put me uncomfortably close to the minimum. Obviously some of those were experimental, so I likely had more of a buffer than it felt like. I'm waiting on the official results to confirm.
Lessons Learned (or confirmed):
1. Eliminate the wrong answers first. Improve your chances if it comes down to 2 close options.
2. Stay calm. I had a couple of stretches of 5+ questions in a row that I was completely guessing. Reset and resume. Don't get caught in a spiral of "what if I fail this...", "there goes $600 down the drain...", etc.
3. Work experience was crucial for me. Reading the OSG and 1500+ questions will give you the terminology, technology exposure, and background concepts ... basically you're now qualified to understand the question, but no closer to knowing the BEST answer with any confidence. That's where the work experience came in.
4. Additional time studying would not have helped me. Different resources may have helped, but I won't fault myself with going with the official guides and test banks.
Mileage may vary. Best of luck!
