Valerie NevittStrategy Advancement Advisor| HumanaAppleton, Wi, United States
For the PMI-ACP exam, I'm wondering about the difference between Work-in-Process vs Work-in-Progress. The Agile Practice Guide, page 31, uses Process, but everywhere else in the Guide it's Progress. Originally I'm a finance undergrad person, and these terms were interchangeable back then, however on the practice exams I've been taking, Work-in-Process is marked wrong, in favor of Work-in Progress. Anyone know why the discrepancy in the Practice Guide and what the Agile background/philosophy is regarding these terms? Saving Changes...
The terms are often used interchangeably but there is a subtle difference. Both refer to a partially complete product. Work in Process is used to describe goods which go from raw materials to products in a relatively short period of time. For example, this could be a door being manufactured for a building. Work in Progress (WIP) is often used for large items, like the building being constructed. Both go on a company's balance sheet, but WIP (the big ticket items) is what they try to clear off before the end of a fiscal quarter/year.
Work in Progress is by far the most commonly used term in my experience. It's used heavily in Lean type variants. I do see many online sources using both terms completely interchangeably though with respect to agile.
If it's only mentioned once and marked wrong on the practice test, I'd use Progress, unless someone knows of a distinction in agile, in which case I'd be very interested to know that distinction too. Saving Changes...
I'd be very surprised if a "real" exam question on the ACP would have both variants as possible answers. PMI does a lot of statistical analysis on how folks answer the questions (which is why they have control questions to test them before marking them for real) and if the distribution of responses shows that an incorrect answer is scored almost as often as the correct answer they would likely drop that incorrect answer in favor of another.
Both are acceptable full forms for WiP. I prefer Process as it reflects any activity occurring between when we start the process of working on an item to when the item is completed. Progress gives the perception that work is actually happening (a.k.a. Touch Time) on a work item when in fact it might be stuck in a prolonged Wait Time state.
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