JOURNAL - Status week #12

Ugh.

An opportunity to pick up an additional class came up last week and I took it. This was an opportunity to get my foot in the door of a new college where I haven't taught before. Unfortunately, this wreaks havoc on my study schedule, because now I have a total of four classes that I'm taking or teaching, in addition to my full time regular job.

I haven't been able to even look at this material for almost 2 weeks

The exam is scheduled to take place in 4 days. I'm still taking Friday off in a last-ditch effort to pull this off. I've already paid for the exam, so I will be taking it.

2 weeks ago I went through all the practice exam questions at the end of each chapter in the QCI Primer. I got 65% correct of 400 questions and averaged about 45 seconds per question. There were 51 that I didn't even answer that I would need to look up.

I did especially poorly on the Metrics section, answering only 30 of 60 questions and getting a total of 37% right. Clearly this is the area to hit hard.

Starting Thursday I'll start cramming, But realistically, it looks like I need to plan a trip to Maryland in September to re-take the last ever offering of this version of the exam.

EXAM PREP - CMM

Here's some detailed information on the SEI Capability Maturity Model [here].

If you don't have time to read this, you might check out their Appendix A, Goals for each Key Process [here]. This summarizes the key process areas. The appendix doesn't include CMM Level-1 Initial, for probably obvious reasons.

EXAM PREP: House of Quality Tutorial

Although we joked about being trapped in the basement while the house of quality is burning down, this tool is reported to be referenced on the exam.

Here's an interactive tutorial from Macquarie University Graduate School of Management (MGSM), the longest continuously operating business school in New South Wales, Australia.

They did a nice job on this.

http://www.gsm.mq.edu.au/cmit/qfd-hoq-tutorial.swf

This is part of Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

JOURNAL - Status week #10

Two weeks to go.

We just finished the last chapter in the CQI Primer, Configuration Management. Much of the information was repeated within the chapter. This seems to be one of the easier chapters, but it only amounts to 10% of the exam.

In our class discussion, Gail said that the exam will often refer to acronyms. Now I'll need to create another cross reference sheet. I don't want to "draw a blank" during the exam.

Despite my good intentions, I blew off the entire weekend. This other, unrelated class I'm taking has created a bit of an overload and I used the weekend for recovery. Bad timing, but probably worthwhile before the final push.

Bruce suggested that we visit the test site during lunch one day, so we will know exactly where we're going on exam day. What a great idea.

I'm still thinking 40% chance of passing, but I need to hit it hard this weekend. It's memorial weekend, so we get another day to prepare.

EXAM PREP - Tutoring

I found this out way too late.

Some local chapters of ASQ (called "Sections") offer free exam prep tutoring after their monthly meeting.

To find the chapter closest to you go to the ASQ.org link here

Check their schedule for the next monthly meeting, and I would just verify that the section provides this kind of service before you show up.

EXAM PREP - Questions Forums

I've found two potential forums for asking questions and getting help. I don't know how effective these will be, but if you're stuck on something it seems like a reasonable place to start:

(1) Software Quality Assurance Forum is a pretty large, active forum relating to many aspects of SQA. Registration is required (free) to post. The link is:

http://www.sqaforums.com/ubbthreads.php


(2) The LinkedIn online "social network" has a Quality Management and Standards Question and Answer group.

This may be a decent spot to pose a question as there appears to be a lot of qualified people reviewing the site.

The open question page is [here].

You will need to sign up for a free membership to post a question, but you don't need a membership to view the questions and answers. I've been a member of this for about 4-5 years and there haven't been any negative side effects (like spam) that I know of.

STUDY MATERIAL: Web Audiocasts

Another source of audio files can be found at the Software Process and Metrics (SPaMcasts) audio site with files relating to testing, metrics, quality interviews, estimation, etc.

Link is [here]

These are pretty current and you can subscribe via an RSS feed.

You have to consider that these may, or may not be inline with actual ASQ dogma, but they can reinforce some concepts and help with getting into the right frame of mind. At least this provides some variety.

And "variety is the SPICE of life".

But SPICE is an ISO 15504 standard relating to assessment, assessors and capability determination.

[this is getting to be really sick ...]