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

Module Review: IE5002 - Applied Engineering Statistics

Semester	AY2015/2016 Semester 2
Program	Master of Science (Industrial & Systems Engineering)
Module Code	IE5002
Module Title	Applied Engineering Statistics
Modular Credit	4 MCs
Teaching Staff	Prof Goh Thong Ngee

This is one of the four foundation modules for the master's program, and it's kinda known as the killer module because who knows applied statistics can be so scary and hard core.

If Prof Goh is still the lecturer for this module when you're reading it, good luck. His notes comprise of a pretty generic collection of statistical analysis, and a lot of self-exploratory work may be expected, like reading up some of the books recommended in this module.

In the first lecture, it was outlined by Prof Goh that statistical analysis branches into:

• Descriptive statistics
• Inferential statistics
• Mathematical statistics

and the focus of this module revolves around inferential statistics.

Student's t-test

Hypothesis testing, something that was rather new to me, was introduced, and by hand, we were taught how to perform Student's t-test (one-sample, two-sample, paired etc) at the start. Just remember the null hypothesis H₀ always states that one mean equals another mean or a value.

Analysis of Variance

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) to me it's like t-test with more than two treatments, and to test if significant difference prevails across treatments. You'll need to understand how to read and analyze an ANOVA table (this part is not difficult).

Design of Experiments

Design of experiments (DOE), wow, what should I say, this is probably the hardest topic in the module. You need to be able to estimate the factor effect, perform statistical testing, and analyze the residual etc. 2^k factorial design and alias structure of the design are something you need to familiarize yourself with before you call yourself prepared for the exam.

Study Tips

Go through all the tutorial/assignment questions and understand how he arrives at the solutions. Of course statistical software like Minitab is able to compute the results quickly and conveniently but the down-to-earth way of computing should be comprehended.
And since the exam is open-book, writing down the steps of arriving at each solution will be beneficial not only when you need to refer during the exam, but also when you need to get yourself familiarized with the concepts.

Exam

Open-book exam, but that doesn't mean that you should study less.
Guess what was the very first question I got during my semester of study, it goes like this:
You are teaching applied engineering statistics to a class at Ngee Ann Polytechnic, which book would you use to teach? Indicate the year, author and publisher etc of the book.
Epic right, never have I come across such stun.

I got an A- for this module.

Stirling Bar & Grill @ Upper Bukit Timah

Stirling Bar & Grill

One of the legit reasons to visit restaurants and cafes along the Upper Bukit Timah Road is the new accessibility to the nearby MRT stations.

Stirling Bar & Grill is one of those lucky ones, located opposite Bukit Timah Shopping Centre and of walking distance from the Beauty World Station, thanks to the newly constructed Downtown Line.

You might be able to recall a vicinity called Stirling Road located in Queenstown, interestingly yes, the bar is named after this road because it's where the boss this bar grew up.

It was a post birthday dinner for me and Wilsen, my housemate whose birthday is a day after mine. I suggested this place simply because on one Sunday afternoon after church service, I patronized and enjoyed their cold brewed coffee by The Nomad, a mobile cafe serving coffee every weekend at Stirling.

A good and bad thing about the payment - there's no GST charges but only cash and NETS accepted. I guess if you sum them up it's still a better deal isn't it?

Exterior

Apparently they're affiliated with a guitar school and there'll be guitar solo performance at night
If you enjoy listening to guitar solo, this is the place you should be patronizing, I mean, how many bars out there with such niche?

SAFRA The Ultimate Voice 2016

SAFRA organizes an annual singing competition called The Ultimate Voice and we were in time to sign up for our very first singing competition as a 3-piece band. There're solo category and group category.

We're required to submit an audio clip of our performance, if I don't remember wrongly, the duration is limited to less than 2 minutes, where I had a hard time deciding which portion of our cover to be trimmed, we submitted "The Scientist" by Coldplay by the way.

Quarter Finals @ SAFRA Toa Payoh (20 Feb)

We're informed that we're in the quarter finals on 16 Feb, an awesome start for us. And later on I found out that one of our Temasek Hall band juniors, Yoke Ling was also in the quarter final, what a coincidence. Check out her blog entry about SAFRA TUV.

I think there were 19 quarter finalists from group category and 100+ from solo category! That's crazy, and no wonder they limit the duration to 1 minute 30 seconds per contestant.

We performed a mashup of "Shut Up and Dance" by WALK THE MOON and "How to Save a Life" by The Fray, it's random I know, and there's barely any link between the songs but somehow they key Gary sings these two songs in the same key of B♭ major, plus the similar tempo, ultimately I think we're just trying to be 'different'. LOL...

Thanks to Hannah for the video, and we got into Semi Finals. So did Yoke Ling.