Certified Quality Improvement Associate (CQIA)

After completing my Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) in January 2017, I wanted to take some more lifetime certifications from ASQ which have no recertification requirements, as each active ASQ certification gives 2 recertification units (RUs) up to 6 RUs that can be counted towards the total 18 RUs required for each recertification cycle for my CSSBB.

Certified Quality Improvement Associate (CQIA) is one of the aforementioned certifications, and so my ex-colleague and I scheduled it together to sit for this computer-based exam in June 2017, given that we'll be spending our time attending lectures and studying during our semester in NUS from January to May. We also reckoned that CQIA will be much easier considering that we've gone through CSSBB.

How did I prepare for CQIA?

We purchased the eBook of The Certified Quality Improvement Associate Handbook, Third Edition by Russell T. Westcott and Grace L. Duffy, which is a pretty concise. I printed it out to be brought into the exam room since it's open book, but I studied completedly through my computer.

We didn't really try out any question bank at all, the only sets of questions we went thru were the CQIA Sample Exam from ASQ and the sample solutions text from Quality Council of Indiana, which published the primers for most ASQ certifications

What kind of exam questions to be expected?

There are 110 questions in the CQIA exam, which I will share a little bit about the actual exam questions I've encountered. Surprisingly, quite a substantial amount of questions are asking about the quality guru's philosophy.

The CQIA Handbook would prepare you well but there were a handful of questions asking about the Juran Trilogy appear in the exam and I don't think the handbook outlines sufficient details about this and so one would probably need more reference material for whichever related to Juran. Questions about Deming were simpler, as long as the exam candidates are familiar with PDCA. The rest of the questions should be pretty doable, with a certain level of ambiguity.

I spent approximately two hours for the exam, and I didn't really want to go through those questions which I marked for review, as I thought as long as I don't have a lot of those marked, I should still be able to pass.

CQIA is a rather uncommon certification in the quality related field, but good luck to whoever taking it.

Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB)

I started taking the ASQ Six Sigma certifications in March 2016, to be specific, I took Certified Six Sigma Yellow Belt (CSSYB) in March 2016 and Certified Six Sigma Green Belt (CSSGB) in June 2016.

Unlike Yellow Black and Green Belt, a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt candidate is required to have two completed projects with signed affidavits or one completed project with signed affidavit and 3 years of work experience in one or more areas of the Six Sigma Body of Knowledge.

I already have more than 3 years of work experience in Cameron and so I used one of my Six Sigma Green Belt projects (Warehouse Picking Cycle Time Reduction) in Cameron as my affidavit, signed by the Operations Manager, who was my project champion.

I was still a member of ASQ, so I enjoyed the discounted exam fee at US$388 (S$570).
My last day in Cameron was 6 Jan 2017 and I'm joining Seagate as a Lean Engineer, and so I requested to join Seagate on 19 Jan 2017, which is a day after my CSSBB exam, so strategically I have time to study at ease during the period I was jobless.

ASQ has recently phased in computer-based testing, so similar to PMP and PMI-ACP, the CSSBB exam is delivered by Prometric testing centers, and again, my ex-colleague and I booked our slots at the King's Arcade branch.

Good things about computer-based testing:

• You'll know your results immediately after submitting the answers.
• No more pencil marking and erasing.

And also a few bad things about computer-based testing::

• Unlike pencil-based testing, all materials accompanied (it's open-book exam for CSSBB) into the examination room are strictly inspected by the proctor. To sum it up, make sure your materials are binded, not stapled; and no sample Q&A portion can be taken in - they flip through almost every page to check on that.
• When it comes to reviewing each question, you have to click one by one as one question is displayed in one screen, so you can't take an quick overview of a section.

Why Six Sigma certifications?

I had my first job landed in Cameron as a Global Rotational Development Program trainee, ever since then, I was exposed to the Six Sigma methodology because Cameron was a Lean Six Sigma enterprise.

I'm thankful that I was given the opportunity to lead the warehouse project which also served as my very first Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project. This first step was important in keeping me motivated further to subsequent Green Belt projects, which in time I closed a total of 3 Green Belt projects, entitling me to be certified as a Cameron certified Six Sigma Green Belt.

I believe it's the success and job satisfaction derived from project results and deliverables that made me persevere in the Lean Six Sigma discipline, to the point that I wanted to take ASQ Six Sigma certifications and considered this field for my future career.

How did I prepare for CSSBB?

You probably don't want to follow my footstep for this, because I only seriously started to study 2-3 weeks before the exam. Do a search online for tips, they'll tell you to start preparing at least a few months before hand.

The reason why I did last minute preparation is because I was busy (actually, lazy... XD). Also, I have read one of the modules in my Master of Science program in NUS last year, titled Applied Engineering Statistics, which comprises of the essential topics in inferential statistics. This saved me a lot of time going through topics in hypothesis testing, ANOVA, regression, DOE etc.

The two most common preparation materials available are:

• The Certified Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook by T.M. Kubiak, Donald W. Benbow
• CSSBB Primer by the Quality Council of Indiana

I used the CSSBB Primer (2014 Edition) I already had there available from someone else. I personally have not gone through the handbook so I can't judge which book prepares the candidate better. But what I can say is, the real exam questions are pretty similar to the CSSBB Primer Solutions Text.

It's a 165-question, 4.5-hour-long exam, where 15 of them are unscored. I finished and submitted my answer in 3 hours because I just don't feel like wait any longer. It's pretty draining as well for 165 questions, but I told myself that I had worse from PMP, which was 200-question.

As mentioned, the results will show on the screen after the answers are submitted, and thank God, I passed.

I do feel contented with the certifications I've achieved so far, CSSYB, CSSGB, CSSBB, PMP and PMI-ACP, all done within 10 months on first try, while I was still studying for my master's degree. Grateful.

PMI Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP)

Soon after attaining my PMP^® credential, my ex-colleague and I decided to pursue together the credential of PMI Agile Certified Practitioner, better known as PMI-ACP^®, another professional designation, offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Agile is an iterative and incremental approach to project management. Despite knowing that its applicability is more towards software development, we are rather more interested in Kanban and Lean which are embodied in PMI-ACP, with topics such as Scrum, extreme programming (XP), test-driven development etc. alongside .

My PMP course was purchased from Udemy, so was my PMI-ACP course. And since we're familiar with Joseph Phillips' course, we continued to purchase his course for PMI-ACP - PMI-ACP Exam Prep, and you won't believe how cheap I purchased it - it was only S$15. Again as a PMI member, I paid US$435 (S$611) for the PMI-ACP exam. So the total cost this time was S$626. Similar to my PMP exam, I didn't get audited for taking the PMI-ACP exam.

It makes sense to get the PMP certification first before applying for PMI-ACP, being a PMP, 2,000 hours of general project experience are exempted, and I only need to clock 1,500 hours working on agile project teams or with agile methodologies, where I clocked with one of my JDI (Just-Do-It) projects and one of my Lean Six Sigma Green Belt projects in Cameron.

This time round I didn't use any other reading materials, only the course and some sample exams available online.

My ex-colleague was supposed to take the exam on the same day with me at King's Arcade (Bukit Timah), but somehow he had issue with his Prometric account due to some discrepancy error from his email addresses, so I headed down alone, took and passed the exam.

My results are as follow:

Domain	Results
Agile Principles and Mindset	Moderately Proficient
Value-Driven Delivery	Moderately Proficient
Stakeholder Engagement	Moderately Proficient
Team Performance	Moderately Proficient
Adaptive Planning	Moderately Proficient
Problem Detection and Resolution	Moderately Proficient
Continuous Improvement	Moderately Proficient

Results look very average, but my aim is just to pass the exam. Certainly glad that I've added another certification to my collection. This will officially be my 4th and last certification of the year (excluding JLPT N2). My next aim will be the Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB) in January 2017.

Project Management Professional (PMP)

Project Management Professional, better known as PMP^® is a professional designation, a global certification, recognized internationally, offered by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Its respectability comes from a few factors. The PMP^® certification scheme is accredited by ANSI against ISO/IEC 17024. Besides, every certification applicants or holders have a chance of randomly being selected for an audit when they submit their application or filing for professional development units (PDUs), where consequence of non compliance can be disastrous.

Kenneth (my colleague from another divisional plant) and I were interested in gaining this prestigious certification in aid of our career progression (hopefully). Together we have already obtained the Certified Six Sigma Green Belt (CSSGB) and Yellow Belt (CSSYB) from ASQ, kinda like my wingman for certification. It wasn't easy - we weren't project manager, but we've executed and closed some projects during our past endeavors in Cameron. As a degree holder, we're required to file 4,500 hours leading and directing projects. Moreever, 35 hours of project management education is a must before applying to sit for the PMP exam. The cumbersome part comes in when you're planning on clocking the project management hours, on top of having 36 months unique non-overlapping professional project management experience (so at the very minimum, one should have at least 3 years of working experience before even thinking about getting PMP).

Kenneth and I were lucky enough to found a PMP course - Project Management Professional: Prep for PMP on Udemy at S$49 taught by Joseph Phillips, which you can use to file for the 35 hours project management education as they are a PMI Registered Education Provider (R.E.P.), so never have to be worried about PMI's audit on the reputation of this course. I recommend this course if you're someone comfortable with online training, rather than spending thousand of dollars for a PMP course outside. I feel that it provides you enough information (not more) for the real PMP exam.
However, besides Udemy, we actually flipped through the most famous reading material - PMP^® Exam Prep by Rita Rita Mulcahy, and realized that there are much more things not covered by Joseph Phillips. And the practice questions are so much harder.

I'll just be open with sharing the information of my application, shown in the table below:

Project	Hours
	Initiating	Planning	Executing	Controlling Monitoring	Closing	Total
Heat Insulation To develop a solution of heat insulation to isolate heat convection from heated item from welder and to insulate heat within the item space when performing welding/cladding operations.	100	150	200	100	50	600
Tool Crib 5S Improvement To introduce and improve 5S standards to tool crib for systematic management of gauges and better visibility.	150	150	300	100	50	750
Production Listing Generation To develop solution for better visibility of outstanding production listing for return goods for repair and new build products.	100	150	250	150	50	700
Throughput Report Integration To integrate local throughput report with relevant to reduce manual data integration of master schedule.	100	150	200	100	50	600
Warehouse Picking Process Cycle Time Reduction To implement warehouse relocation project (new high racking, reach truck training, line marking) with rack relocation, bin number standardization and semi gantry crane installation.	150	200	600	200	100	1250
Gauge Management Improvement To improve quality of gauge room related activities.	100	150	400	200	100	950
Total	700	950	1,950	850	400	4,850

As you can see, since I come from a manufacturing background, many of the projects I was involved in are more related to process improvement with lean or six sigma driven methodology. Rather than delivering the typical products or services, my deliverables are more channeled to improved and sustained processes. The one with the heaviest load is none other than the warehouse expansion project as it literally involved building a physical warehouse with installation and relocation of racks, which was also my very first Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project.

One good thing about PMI's exam - you don't have to pay when you submit your online application, you only pay after you received the results of your application - either approved or rejected. And the unusual thing (to me) is that you only know if you're randomly chosen for an audit only right after your payment, NOT right after your application submission. For my case, I didn't get audited.

Like the typical way of exam payment, we registered as a member at US$139 (S$192) and paid the exam fee at US$405 (S$559), and my expenditure for PMP amounted at a nice number of S$192 (membership) + S$559 (exam fee for members) + S$49 (course on Udemy) = S$800.

PMP exam is delivered by Prometric testing centers, which are currently only available at NTUC LearningHub (Bras Basah) and King's Arcade (Bukit Timah) in Singapore. We went for the King's Arcade one as the NTUC LearningHub's calendar was fully booked. The testing center would prefer passport as an identification method because it is one document containing all required information including signature. You'll be asked to empty your pocket to perform a full body scan, signing in and out whenever you enter or leaving the examination room.

A 4-hour 200 questions computer-based exam has never been kind - it was simply mentally exhausting to sit in front of the computer answering questions which might contain more than one correct answers (you just have to pick the best one). And you really don't want to go through so many of the questions over again, because one question appears on one page, more clicks are required when you're reviewing more questions. As such, to a certain point I really wanted to submit my exam, it was around 3+ hours spent, and my pulse was so rapid and hard that everything I feel with my body is merely my heart pumping, even when I tried to remain calm while completing the survey after the exam on the screen. And the screen loaded, and loaded, and loaded... "Congratulations! You passed......", I forgot what came next but "Congratulations!" was the only word that caught my eyes. Seriously, no idea when was the last time I felt so relieved in my life.

As you know, PMI won't provide your exact score, neither will they tell you the passing score, passing is rather scaled and based on relativity, but I would say it's safe to get at least Moderately Proficient for all domains. And my results were as such:

Domain	Results
Initiating	Moderately Proficient
Planning	Moderately Proficient
Executing	Moderately Proficient
Monitoring and Controlling	Proficient
Closing	Moderately Proficient

I literally grinned and walked out of the room. 6 Sep 2016 was certainly a celebratory day.

It's actually fortunate to have passed PMP now because in 2017 PMI is releasing the 6th edition of PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge), which might include additional material compared to 5th edition.

The next day I received an email confirming the credential bestowal and saying that the certification package will be delivered to my residential address in 6 - 8 weeks (for international shipping). Additionally I ordered the complimentary PMP lapel pin. They actually took 2 weeks to arrive though.

And I am proud to say that
I'm a PMP^®

All this also comes from the Lord Almighty,
whose plan is wonderful,
whose wisdom is magnificent.
- Isaiah 28:29