PMP is one of most important certifications, one can do. It can give you a career boost. This can be a way to move upwards in terms of both career growth and higher salary.

There are many sites that gives information on how you can pass a PMP Exam. All the books that contains explanation of the PMP Guide Book, also contains information and guides on how to pass the exam.

These sites are almost all right and will help you get the certification. According to them here is what you need to do

Commit to a time schedule and milestones
User multiple different resources
Join a study group
Study the process groups, how and where they fit in
Simulate the testing environment
Use of reference guides
Study PMBOK thrice in a go
Use of flash cards
Approach leading up to last few days and then final stretch

When you do you will be able to get the certification. But what these sites and other PMP teachers/trainers doesn’t tell you, is getting certification is not be all thing.

Learning on how to pass the exam is one thing, learning to exercise the knowledge that you should attain by doing all above is else. What I want to describe below is what you need to do in order to not only get certified, but retain enough knowledge that will help you propel further in your career.

Here are the things I believe a resource should exercise

If you are appearing for PMP exam that means you would have spent some time working in project management role/environment. Now what you need to do is relate your experience to what PMBOK tells you.
Identify the real life scenarios from your experience list them down. Read a chapter and try to apply that new perspective on your experience and list next to them what you should have done.
Whatever you do in your daily life, try to classify them on the basis of PMI guidelines. For example if you are starting a new task in your home, look at it and ask a question, if this was a project, for which I was project manager, would I have started with information that I have?
Keep questioning the reference books, why the author is saying this, why not that. Once you start questioning, you will start collecting the reason behind a particular idea and retain that knowledge longer.

Please note I am not saying that you do not need to listen to advice on passing the exams, they are very very important, what I am saying is don’t do PMP certification just to get certified. Do it to improve your skill set, knowledge and become a better project manager.

Case Study: HP Quality Center (with Remedy)

Client

Our client is one of the technically advanced information technology department of one of the Middle Eastern Countries.

The Challenge

Our client recently got Remedy® for their Service and delivery management. They developed a very sophisticated process, where every incident, service request or change request is handled, and proper resources are assigned to gather requirements, develop and test these requirements.

In remedy they are able to manage their clients, their services, incidents or changes, but they are not able to log, maintain, trace or search requirements, there is no organized way to place, create and execute test cases.

The process before implementation of HP Quality Center

Our Role

After looking at the problems, we analyzed that if this IT Department of Middle Eastern government used HP Quality Center, with customized workflow for requirement gathering, test planning and execution and Defect management, their day to day activities will improve and service delivery to other departments will be enhanced.

We recommended not to stop using remedy, infect use it to complement Quality Center, keeping the task management, incident, service or change request in Remedy and rest to be moved to Quality Center.

We also suggested that they should HP Unified Functional Tester for their regression testing.

Our Solution

In order to enable them on HP Quality Center and HP Unified Functional Tester, Kualitatem devised a detailed plan for Implementation, Customization and Trainings.

This customization included detailed approval, process for requirement gathering, test management, test execution and defects management.

The implementation of validation process, gives the flexibility to track all the changes, during the whole approval and validation process. It gives you systematic opportunity to get things done on Quality Center up to the geranial level, while still following the process and maintaining traceability.

We included a services engagement to configure Quality Center for our client’s particular compliance practices particular workflow in support of their specific validation testing process. The Validation Package for Quality Center included:

Client Specific project template configuration, including workflow and eSignature implementation, validation documentation, and validation services.
Computer System Validation process Integration, including adaptation of tool to existing client validation processes, development of supporting procedures (i.e. QC project implementation procedure), as well as training, maintenance, and support.

This effort was able to assist in many documentation form QC itself

System Requirements Specification
Functional Specifications
Test Plans
Traceability Matrix
Final Validation Report

The process after we filled the gaps looked like this

The Benefits

Improved Traceability of requirements with requirements
Improved Traceability of requirements with Test Plans and its execution
Improved Traceability of requirements with defects
Reduction in costs by speeding up the manual process
Reduction in costs by reusing the components and entities
Reduction in costs by using automated testing for regression testing instead of Manual testing
By placing QC with in the current process, the familiarity to old process is not lost, thus giving the users more usable system.
Leveraging a certified Business Partner means getting a Quality Center expert who has access to a large network of HP expertise

Month: April 2016

PMP Certification – Exam, Training and The Day after