June 07, 2001

Looming test


I took the morning off, and by God, I’m going to do it again. No gym today, no rowing tomorrow. I have informed our "Mafia bosses"[1] that I will not be at tomorrow’s practice, have told YSam, have of course told T, and have informed the people I’m scheduled to race with in two weeks in case everyone else forgets to tell them.

I have a professional exam ("Certified Quality Analyst", whatever that means) on Saturday. I’m not terribly confident about it. It’s supposed to demonstrate a "minimal competency in the field" and I’ve been told that if I have enough practical experience, I’ll have no problem passing it. The reasons I’m still worried are 1) how do I know what "enough" is? and 2) that’s not what the study guide indicates. According to the study giude and its practice question, I should have memorized everything from the 7 categories for the Malcolm Baldrige quality award to the 6 tasks for performing criticism, the 5 types of listening, the 4-step complaint resolution process, the 3 elements of conformity behavior, the 2 major parts of awareness training, and the definition of Quality Assurance vs Quality Control. Lucky for me they don’t ask for Deming’s Fourteen Points. Actually, it all reminds me of Celtic mythology: the Three Oldest Things, the Four Generous Men of Britain, and so on.

I’m not thrilled about memorizing the Baldrige categories, because they’re the sort of thing any professional would look up if she needs them, but at least they’re objective and relevant to QA. I really hate the idea of memorizing something that someone just made up to support a theory that someone else thought might possibly be relevant to a QA Manager.(Five parts of speech: information, verbal, vocal, body, graphic); Three interpersonal characteristics: inclusion, control, affection.) Most of the ones pertaining to any sort of action seem to be based on the Deming PDCA cycle, which is plan->do->check->act, so I’ll fall back on that for anything I don’t know. The major points of it are to plan before doing, and check how things are going and make changes afterward, instead of blindly jumping into action, and never stopping to see if your actions are working. Yes, a lot of QA boils down to common sense.

I know that the real test won’t be just like the sample questions, since the three samples are 50 questions or less and the real test has two of those questions plus two essay sections. I hope I can apply a judicious combination of experience and bullshit to get through the essay questions experience, memory, and inspired guesswork to get through the "objective" (ha!) questions. It would look good both for my company and for me professionally (i.e.resume-wise and salary-wise) to have if I pass the CQA cert, so wish me luck.

[1]At the Big Rowers’ Meeting last week, people decided that we could improve communications by adding another level (I missed some logic there) and instead of talking directly to our coach, having a couple of point people to whom we would all report if we were going to miss a practice.

Posted by dichroic at June 7, 2001 08:31 AM
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