Wednesday, February 20, 2008

STUDY MATERIAL - study guide

Looks like I hit a good one here. A google search brought up Douglas Hoffman, an ASQ Fellow, who posted a 390 page .pdf presentation/summary on the web. This appears to follow the Quality Council of Indiana's Primer.

Link to Hoffman Material

EXAM PREP - Sample Quizzes (free)

I took all the Free Quiz posts and consolidated them here:

(1) The Westfall Team, a consulting group, has posted a number of quizzes on their site.

WestfallTeam.com

They have included this disclaimer, but the quizzes appear to add value,

"Note: The items in these quizzes are NOT from the past CSQE examinations NOR were they created as part of CSQE exam development process. "

(2) Another one - 12 questions

http://www.sandia.gov/SQF/spin9701/sld034.htm

(3) Free online questions from McGraw Hill's

Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach, by Roger S Pressman, R.S. Pressman and Associates.

To access this (1) Select a chapter, then (2) click on "Quizzes Multiple Choice Quiz" under the select a chapter.

Here's the link

McGraw Hill sample quiz

(4) This site says they will provide a link to a free sample test if you register with your email address.

I probably won't do this right away, but here is the link:

IQPS Sample Test Signup


(5) Found this on a Russian site, 24 questions, some are identical to item #2 above:

Sample questions

(6) Here's a sample quiz on the yahoo message board [link here].

GENERAL INFO - CSQE Salary Survey

Want to know how this certification may translate into real dollars?

Heres a link to a multi-faceted salary survey with a slice-and-dice approach to the data.

payscale.com for CSQE

Thursday, February 14, 2008

STUDY MATERIAL - Definitions

Here are some links to quality glossaries. I'll be printing some of these to take to the exam.

(1) This is a link to the ASQ Glossary. This is an online page. I assume that this will be the best source of definitions available.

ASQ online glossary

I want to bring this information with me to the exam so I copied the ASQ glossary into a document on 4/4/08. ASQ copyright restrictions appear to allow this. As this is copied from the online source, it becomes obsolete on 4/5/08, as soon as I downloaded it.

Here is a hardcopy link.

(2) Found a glossary of Software Testing terms. This won't be specific to the CSQE exam, but should provide a decent repository. It's from the American Software Testing Qualifications Board, Inc., another/different credentialing exam. Below is a link to their printable document ...

ASTQB Glossary

(3) A Six Sigma Glossary:

6sixsigma.com

STUDY INFO - Body of Knowledge

Here is the ASQ's Body of Knowledge.

This will be the framework for study for the exam

ASQ BOK link

STUDY MATERIAL - study guide

I was talking to a colleague, Jeff, today. Jeff is a quality professional where I work and is a certified quality professional through Brainbench.

He said that he bought an ASQ study guide from the Quality Council of Indiana to help him with the Brainbench exam. He highly recommends this document.

There's also a link to a *free* chapter that you can view (we do like *free*).

Free Sample Chapter

Here's where you can order the study guide for $70:

Quality Council of Indiana

I'm going to hold off on buying this until I see what else I can find. The free chapter will provide some good material for now.

Update 4/14/08 *** This CSQE Primer has in fact turned out to be the text for the CSQE class we're attending. In chapter #4 on Quality Auditing, the QCI recommends that you buy their Certified Quality Auditor Primer. That's not going to happen for me, but here is a link to a free chapter from the Quality Auditor Primer.

INTRODUCTIONS

I'm Dan.

I am pursuing the CSQE certification by taking advantage of a free training class offered at my place of employment.

I recently attained my PMP certification from the Project Management Institute and was somewhat surprised when I could not locate a consolidated source of information for the CSQE as there are many such sites focused on PMP candidates.

I am currently an IT Manager in the healthcare industry.

Unless they choose to provide their own intro, the other contributors to this blog are:

Bruce - A Tech Lead, and probably one of the best in our organization, and

Jim - A Quality Architect employed in a very, very, very large manufacturing company. With Jim's wealth of quality experience, I would suggest that his opinion would take precedence over Bruce's and mine.

Hopefully, you can find something of value on this site.