Wait, QA and QC are not the same?

Some of my students already know that QA and QC are not exactly the same. However, a very small percentage can actually tell me the difference between the two.

For many of us, we refer to quality under one breath, even going as far as having roles in our organizations such as Director of QA/QC. This only further confuses the masses. In short, QA (Quality Assurance) is setting the standard and QC (Quality Control) is testing to ensure that standard has been met.

One of my clients operates a convenience store chain. The person who determined that milk must always be between 38 degrees and 42 degrees at all times is in QA. The inspector who samples the milk to ensure that requirement is met is in QC.

Now imagine if the QA and QC people both report to the same person. What happens when the milk is consistently over 42 degrees? Does she change the standard or does she find a solution to the problem? You can see how she may faced with a dilemma. That’s why QA and QC should typically not be managed by the same person.

MS Project: The difference between Standard and Professional

What’s the difference between MS Project Standard and MS Project Professional? I get this question a lot when I teach MS Project classes.

Here’s Microsoft’s explanation:

Office Project Standard 2007 is the latest version of the desktop project management program. As a stand-alone product, Office Project Standard 2007 helps project managers, business managers, and planners to manage and plan projects independently with familiar, easy-to-use tools. Office Project Standard 2007 is not designed to exchange data with Office Project Server 2007.

Office Project Professional 2007 is the desktop client that is also used to connect with Office Project Server 2007 as part of the Office EPM Solution. Office Project Professional 2007 offers all the tools found in Office Project Standard 2007, and when used with Office Project Server 2007, it also provides powerful EPM capabilities such as collaboration, management of shared resources, portfolio management, and reporting across projects and programs run by different project managers.

So what does that mean? Standard and Professional are the same unless you are going to use Project Server. Professional is required for Project Server and will cost nearly double. Otherwise, save your organization money and get Standard (retail $599/$349 upgrade vs. $999/599 upgrade).

Of course, please bear in mind that you may have future needs for Project Server so if that’s the case, Project Professional should also be considered for your organization’s growth, even if you don’t need it today.

Skipping questions on your PMP exam

A commonly asked question when I teach my PMP exam prep course is “When I’m taking the PMP exam, can I skip the questions that I don’t know?”

Let’s take some of the guesswork out of that. You should never skip any question on the exam! That’s because you are not penalized for wrong answers (unlike the SAT exam you took way back in high school).

In the current version of the PMP exam, you have four choices for each of the 200 questions. If you know the answer for a question, choose an answer and move on. If you don’t know the answer, or at least not totally confident of the answer, choose an answer anyway and mark the question before moving on, which can be done by simply clicking the little checkbox in the corner of your screen.

You’ll have an opportunity to come back to all your marked questions later to review your choice. Throughout the rest of the exam, other questions may trigger your memory for the marked questions.

Just remember to choose what you feel is the best answer before moving on, just in case you don’t have time to get back to that question. You definitely don’t want to submit the exam with blank answers. Afterall, a 25% chance of getting a question correct is better than 0%, right?

Baseline best practices using MS Project

Many new users to MS Project, or any other project management tool for that matter, do not set baselines for their project files. Without a baseline, however, a you can never really accurately gauge performance on the project. For instance, you won’t see variances or earned value data.

A baseline is what I call an original snapshot of your project. When you set a baseline (MS Project 2007 calls it ‘Set baseline’; all previous versions refer to it as ‘Save baseline’), you are essentially saving Start, Finish, Duration, Work, and Cost data for the entire project, each subproject, and each subtask.

Although you may have multiple baselines for each project (up to 11 baselines in MS Project), nearly all of my clients and students only have a need for one. I usually recommend only using one anyway since there is no quick way to extract those other baselines without additional configuration. Anyway, I’ll save that topic for another day.

In the meantime, here are some general best practices for setting baselines:

• Set your baseline when you are ready to begin the project. That means when it has been approved, the day before, the morning of, etc…
• Only clear baselines when you don’t want to see baseline data in your tables and views. Otherwise, simply set the baseline again and MS Project will overwrite the previous baseline.
• If you have new tasks during the project, you can save a baseline on only those tasks so you don’t have to save the baseline for the entire project.
• Interim plans are similar to baselines but MS Project only saves Start and Finish data.

New Microsoft Project Exams

Microsoft has released their new MS Project certifications and they are on par with their other serious certs.

70-632 Microsoft Project 2007 Desktop, Managing Projects

70-633 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects

70-634 Microsoft Project 2007 Server, Managing Projects and Programs

The first two are MCTS (Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist) exams, while the last is a MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional). The MCITP also requires achieving the two MCTS credentials first.

I took the 70-632 exam last Fall when it became available and although I passed easily, I was surprised at the difficulty of the exam. Almost all questions were scenario based and I really had to not only understand MS Project inside and out, but also have project management knowledge.

In February, I took the 70-633 exam and passed. It was a very similar format and again, I was impressed with the number of scenarios that required me to really think. That said, I took these exams without the help of practice exams, which I’m sure would have made the process a tad easier.