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Six Sigma Certification: (LSSGB) Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Is a Six Sigma Certification right for you? Here, we’ll dig into everything you need to know about becoming a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt (LSSGB) and PM-ProLearn’s lean six sigma training course to get you there. At PM-ProLearn, we aim to help individuals like you grow into prosperous careers within the project management field. These career-enhancing certifications can be used globally across a variety of industries depending on where your passion lies. Here you’ll find:

What is a Six Sigma Certification?

Why Should I Get a Six Sigma Certification?

Six Sigma Green Belt Certification Requirements

Everything You Need to Know About our LSSGB Course

Green Belt Six Sigma Exam

Lean Six Sigma Certification Cost and Funding Options

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What Is Agile
Project Management?

״Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change״

In today’s world where change is constant, Project Managers need to find a way to direct the action of their teams, while not restricting their actions. Essentially, they need a way to control the chaos while providing clarity, without micromanaging the work. Hence the birth of Agile or adaptive project management.

Unlike predictive or traditional project management, Agile focuses first and foremost on the team. It has been learned that people matter more than process when dealing with change. Building upon this foundation, Agile will break complex problems into iterative and incremental steps.

This allows for integrating new ideas in stride with the work being done. Lastly, Agile incorporates a variety of processes so that the team can determine their way of working to solve the unique problem in front of them.

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What is a Six Sigma Certification?

A Six Sigma Certification is a professional credential that employers look for to verify that you have a certain level of expertise in the Six Sigma method which is a data-driven approach to quality assurance. It uses statistical tools and methodologies to identify risks, defects, and inefficiencies in processes so that you can reduce them and improve the quality and efficiency of your work.

Lean Six Sigma is a merging of complimentary best practices from Lean (Waste or Muda reduction/removal) and Six Sigma (variation reduction/Quality improvement). At its core, it is a business methodology that can lead to increased profits, increased customer satisfaction, improved employee morale, and reduction in costs.

Lean Six Sigma has been broken into various levels referred to as belts. Each belt level indicates greater understanding and proficiency in the discipline and analytical capabilities of Lean and Six Sigma.

Depending on your individual or organizational goals, one or multiple belts might be the right choice for you.

White belt: Basic understanding of lean and Six Sigma principles
Yellow belt: Basic understanding of DMAIC and the systematic process of evaluation. Additional understanding of topics like value stream mapping, measurement, and how to participate in a kaizen event or Lean Six Sigma project team.
Green belt: First belt level where you are expected to be a team lead managing your project. A Lean Six Sigma Green Belt, or Six Sigma Green Belt is expected to be able to run a project from charter development, through the entire Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control processes. A Lean Six Sigma green belt should also be familiar with statistical analysis, data visualization, and decision-making.

For those wanting to be a lean six sigma practitioner and leader, starting at the Green Belt certification is the ideal starting point. Jack Welsh at GE Required all managers to be at least a certified Six Sigma Green Belt.

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Why Should I Get a Six Sigma Certification?

Earning your Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification demonstrates to yourself and your organization that you can be an independent leader of continuous process improvement. You have an understanding of lean and can apply them to fix real-world problems. It also demonstrates to an organization that you have a greater understanding of systems and customer requirements.

Higher Salary

Lean Six Sigma Green Belt holders can expect an average salary increase of about 10-15% compared to those that are not certified. According to Salary.com, the average salary for a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt professional in the U.S. is approximately $105,000 annually, which is significantly higher than the national average salary.

Be In Demand

According to a report by Burning Glass Technologies, there have been 33% more job postings requiring candidates have Lean Six Sigma skills over the past five years. Many Fortune 500 companies require Lean Six Sigma certification for roles in quality management, operations, and continuous improvement, especially in leadership and managerial positions.

Increased Career Opportunities

A study by the American Society for Quality (ASQ) found that certified professionals have a 35% higher chance of being promoted compared to non-certified individuals. Not only do many organizations require Lean Six Sigma certifications for leadership and managerial positions, but the methodologies taught in Lean Six Sigma, such as DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control), are widely applicable across various industries, enhancing your overall versatility and employability making it that much easier for you to climb the corporate ladder.

Six Sigma Green Belt Certification Requirements

Lean Six Sigma green belt has a small barrier to entry and is a great starting point. There are no pre-requisites required to earn the certification. All that is required is that you complete our 35-hour training course and pass the 2-hour proctored exam.

Our training and exam is governed by the CSSC (Council for Six Sigma Certification), and our training prepares students to pass the exam from the IASSC (International Association for Six Sigma Certification) and ASQ (American Society for Quality) as well.

The IASSC and CSSC have no required prerequisites for the exam while ASC requires that candidates have 3 or more years of full-time, paid work experience in one or more areas of the Six Sigma Green Belt Body of Knowledge.

Ready to Earn Your Lean Six Sigma Green Belt? Let's Get Started!

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What differentiates Our LSSGB from IASSC And ASQ?

As a training provider to the DoD, our training must align with the IASSC Body of knowledge. But we felt that there was more to be taught. American Society of Quality (ASQ) body of knowledge provided additional skills and viewpoints, but these combined still did not cover all the aspects we thought necessary. By integrating quality management and quality control concepts from the Project Management Institute, we feel that our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt project manager certification best combines all necessary topics including Theory of Constraints, Total Quality Management, and others.

Maintaining Your LSSGB Certification Requirements

To maintain your LSSGB certification for the IASSC and CSSC, holders must pass a 50-question, 1 1/2 hour proctored exam within 3 years of certification (or 90 days of certification lapse). A minimum of 70% is required to pass this exam.

For the ASQ, there are two methods for recertification.

Recertification Journal - Earn at least 18 Recertification Units (RUs) within a 3-year period.

Recertification Exam - Taken at the end of the 3 year certification period (or if expired within a 6 month grace period). Recertification tests are only proctored by ASQ on 2 recertification dates each year; June 30th and December 31st. Candidates must achieve a score of 70% to pass the exam.

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lean six sigma green belt virtual class at PM-ProLearn

LSSGB Course

Our expert-led LSSGB course will prepare you to pass the the exam for all three governing bodies, CSSC, IASSC, and ASQ. The course can be taken as a full-time 5-day course either in-person or virtually, as a part-time 9-evening virtual course, or completely self-paced online without an instructor. If choosing an instructor-led course, we recommend enrolling at least 1 week before the LSSGB course start date to complete the foundational pre-work.

Next, we’ll take a deep dive into what the lean six sigma certification course looks like.

Agile Training Overview and Objectives

PM-ProLearn’s agile training is designed to prepare you for the Agile Certified Practitioner or PMI-ACP certification exam. The course focuses on concepts for agile principles and mindset, team performance, adaptive processes, agile methodologies, problem detection and resolution, and continuous improvement. After completing the Agile certification course, you should be able to do each of the objectives outlined in this section.

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Several course features will help you achieve these objectives; however, some objectives still require self-study after the course to fully prepare for the PMI-ACP certification exam. The PM-ProLearn learning system provides a study guide and foundation for the course materials, including all post-course study and exam preparation. In addition, as a student, you will have access to additional material from PMI to use for post-course studying in preparation for the PMI-ACP exam.

Explore, embrace and apply agile principles and mindset within the context of the project team and organization.

Create an environment of trust, learning, collaboration, and conflict resolution that promotes team self-organization, enhances relationships among team members, and cultivates a culture of high performance.

Produce and maintain an evolving plan, from initiation to closure, based on goals, values, risks, constraints, stakeholder feedback, and review findings.

Provide an overview of the primary methodologies used in agile including SCRUM, Extreme Programming, Kanban, Lean Concepts, Feature Driven Development, Dynamic System Development Method, and Crystal.

Continuously identify problems, impediments, and risks; prioritize and resolve it promptly; monitor and communicate the problem resolution status; and implement process improvements to prevent them from occurring again.

Continuously improve the quality, effectiveness, and value of the product, the process, and the people (team), including process analysis and tailoring, product feedback methods, reviews, and retrospectives.

Lean Six SigmaTraining: The Lesson Plan

Lesson 1: Foundations

Organization-wide Planning and Deployment Learning Objectives:

Define the central concepts of lean, six sigma and theory of constraints.
Understand the value of strategic planning and its relationship with continuous improvement.
Discuss quality improvement innovators and their contributions to lean six sigma.

Organizational Process Management and Measures Learning Objectives:

Discuss organizational process management and the measures for success.
Define benchmarks and performance standards.
Discuss the value analysis for projects.
Understand the costs associated with quality.

Team Management Objective:

Understand the roles of project team members.
Understand the components of team dynamics.
Discuss scheduling and decision tools used during project management.
Discuss team decision making and conflict management.
Discuss how to manage and communicate with a project team.

Project Management Basics Learning Objective:

Explain how predictive and adaptive project life cycles work; explain what a hybrid development approach is.
Discuss the basic principles of project management from project initiation to planning and execution.
Describe change management theory and its relation to organizational change.
Understand project risk and how to manage risk within a project to ensure success.

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Lesson 2: Define Phase

The Basics of Six Sigma Learning Objective:

Understand the meanings of Six Sigma and the phased methodology used with Six Sigma Projects.
Describe the general history of Six Sigma and continuous improvement.
Discuss the deliverables of Six Sigma and its value to an organization.
Discuss the problem-solving strategy Y = f(X) and understand how it is used to study the relationship between independent and dependent variables.

Fundamentals of Six Sigma Learning Objective:

Define a process and the various elements, inputs and outputs.
Understand process performance and the basic six sigma metrics for measuring project success.
Discuss methodologies for monitoring success of a project and tools that can be used with process improvement.

Selecting Lean Six Sigma Projects Learning Objective:

Understand the approaches an organization can use in selecting a lean six sigma project.
Discuss the organizational drivers and success metrics used with six sigma projects.

Voice of the Customer (VOC), Business and Employees Learning Objective:

Understand the three voices used by an organization that assist in understanding the process improvement.
Discuss what a customer is and understand how the voice of the customer plays a major role in improvement projects.
Discuss Critical to Quality (CTQ) and how these customer based elements inform decision making within a project.
Understand the various requirements of the customer, business and employees.

Lean Principles in the Organization Learning Objective:

Understand the basic lean concepts that can be used within an organization.
Discuss the general history of lean.
Understand the relationship between lean and six sigma.
Understand value stream mapping and its importance in fully understanding a process.
Discuss the eight elements of muda or waste within a process.
Discuss the 5S methodology and its importance in both manufacturing and administrative aspects of organizations.

Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) Methodology Learning Objective:

Discuss the various methodologies used with Design for Six Sigma (DFSS).
Understand Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and its importance when looking at project risk.

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Lesson 3: Measure Phase

Process Definition Learning Objective:

Understand the tools used when looking at cause and effect within a process.
Discuss how a process is documented and analyzed.

Probability and Statistics Learning Objective:

Provide an overview of basic probability concepts.
Understand the central limit theorem and its relationship to six sigma concepts.
Discuss statistical distributions and graphical analysis of data.

Collecting and Summarizing Data Learning Objective:

Discuss the types of data and measurement scales used with six sigma.
Understand sample planning.
Discuss the elements of a data collection plan and the methods for collecting data about a process.
Understand what descriptive statistics is and how it differs from inferential statistics.
Discuss graphical methods for representing data.

Measurement System Analysis (MSA) Learning Objective:

Discuss the basics of measurement system analysis.
Understand the concepts of precision, accuracy, bias, linearity and stability.
Understand how a gage repeatability and reproducibility (Gage R&R) study helps teams understand whether the measurement devices are appropriate for the collection plan.
Discuss the difference between variable and attribute measurement system analyses.

Process and Performance Capability Learning Objective:

Understand the difference between process performance and process specifications.
Discuss the concept of process stability and the elements of common cause and special cause variability.
Discuss the elements of process capability (Cp, Cpk) and process performance (Pp, Ppk).
Understand there is a difference between short term and long term process capabilities that are accounted for by a sigma shift.

Lesson 4: Analyze and Improve Phases

Exploratory Data Analysis and Patterns of Variation (Analyze Phase) Learning Objective:

Discuss the three types of process variation (positional, cyclical and temporal) and the multi-variate study that analyzes these variations.
Discuss the classes of distribution and how it represents data for analysis.
Understand inferential statistics and how it allows the team to make decisions about the entire population.

Regression Analysis (Analyze Phase) Learning Objective:

Understand regression analysis and how it is used to understand the relationship between independent and dependent variables.

Hypothesis Testing (Analyze Phase) Learning Objective:

Understand the general concepts and goals of hypothesis testing.
Discuss the various hypothesis tests used for normal and non-normal data.

Design of Experiments (Improve Phase) Learning Objective:

Understand the concepts and factors in design for experiments used to narrow down the many inputs into the vital few inputs that have the biggest impact.
Understand the terminology used with experiments.
Understand how to plot and analyze data to understand the relationships between independent and dependent variable.

Root Cause Analysis (Improve Phase) Learning Objective:

Discuss the importance of gap and root cause analysis that allows a team to focus on the elements that have the most important effects.
Understand the tools used in looking at the root cause of issues within a process.

Lean Tools (Improve Phase) Learning Objectives:

Discuss types of waste and how it can be eliminated within an organization.
Understand the importance of incremental process improvement and kaizen within an organization.

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Lesson 5: Control Phase

Statistical Process Control Learning Objective:

Discuss the basics of statistical process control and rational subgrouping.
Understand the elements of a control chart and its importance in monitoring the capability of a process.

Sustain Improvements Learning Objective:

Discuss the elements of selecting improvement solutions for a project.
Understand the elements of a control plan and how it ensures improvements are sustained over time.

Lean Tools for Process Control Learning Objective:

Understand the lean tools used by organizations for continuous improvement of their processes.
Discuss the importance of lean tools in maintaining process improvements.

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LSSGB Training Schedule: What to Expect

Our 5-day lean six sigma certification course runs from 8:00 am until about 4:00 pm with an hour lunch break in between and is scheduled Monday - Friday. The day-to-day timing may vary slightly depending on group discussions and things of that nature but will follow the outline of the following schedule. The lean six sigma certification course outline and schedule are the same whether you do an instructor-led virtual or in-person course. No matter your preferred learning style, know you’ll get the same quality content and instruction in both atmospheres. Your exam will be given to you on the last day of the training course.

PM-ProLearn also offers an online only self-paced training program for those that aren't able to attend live classes.

lean six sigma green belt 5-day training schedule

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PMI-ACP 6 evening course schedule at PM-ProLearn

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Our 6-evening course runs from 6 pm to 10 pm for two weeks Tuesday through Thursday each week. The day-to-day timing may vary slightly depending on group discussions and things of that nature but will follow the outline of the following schedule. The 6-evening course is only available as an instructor-led virtual course.

If you prefer to learn on your own time, completely self-paced without an instructor, that option is available to you as well. Our self-paced students still get access to our entire learning system including the live instructor help desk where they can ask instructors questions on areas where they may need a little extra help.

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The lean six sigma certification exam can vary depending on the governing body and method of testing.

ASQ has the most rigid of the certification processes and information for that can be found at www.asq.org/cert/dates.

IASSC and CSSC testing processes vary from vendor to vendor. For PM-ProLearn live training, candidates are given the Green Belt exam on the last day of training. If a candidate does not pass on the first attempt, they follow the procedures for testing outlined for self-paced students below for any additional attempts. Candidates can attempt up to three times in one year. For PM-ProLearn self-paced students, candidates schedule their exam through the Instructor Help Disk in our learning management system. Candidates should allot up to 2 hours for their 1 1/2 hour exam for check in, verification, and testing. Candidates will receive their results at the end of the test.

The LSSGB exam through PM-ProLearn is approved by the CSSC, it consists of 80 multiple choice questions and is open book.

Green Belt Six Sigma Exam

Free Practice PMI-ACP Exam

While we offer plenty of study materials and practice exams to those paying for our pmp training, we also offer this free practice exam to anyone who would like to get familiar with the PMI-ACP exam layout.

This timed and full-length practice PMI-ACP exam is 120 questions designed by a team of experts so that you may evaluate your readiness to take the official PMI-ACP exam with PMI.

Agile Principles and Mindset - 16%

Value-Driven
Delivery- 20%

Stakeholder Engagement - 17%

Team Performance -
16%

Adaptive Planning -
12%

Problem Detection and Resolution - 10%

Continuous Improvement - 9%

Take Me To The PMI-ACP Practice Exam

PMI-ACP Exam Domains

About This Practice PMI-ACP Exam

All questions were created by a team of PMP expert instructors referencing a set of cloned PMP questions provided to us by the Project Management Institute (PMI). Every instructor who worked on this project is certified by PMI as an Authorized Training Partner (ATP) instructor. They worked hard to meticulously align each question to a specific domain and task from the PMP exam content outline published by PMI according to the same percentage of the actual PMP exam.

The time limit for this practice PMP exam is set for 250 minutes. When you take the actual PMP exam, you can take two 10-minute breaks, so we highly recommend that you schedule and take those breaks during this practice test giving you an actual 230 minutes of testing time. We recommend taking your first break after question 60 and your second break after question 120.

You may take this practice PMP exam as often as you’d like. The same 180 questions will always appear however they are presented randomly. Don't be discouraged by a low score the first time you take this test. Our expert-instructors will be able to get you where you need to be to pass the PMP Exam.

Lean Six Sigma Certification Cost

Our lean six sigma green belt certification cost is 1899. The lean six sigma training portion can be taken in-person, virtually through Zoom, or self-paced online. Both in-person and virtual courses are instructor-led and can be delivered in a 5-day format 8 am-4 pm Monday - Friday.

The Full Agile Certification Cost Includes:

Lean Six Sigma training course covering the 35-hour requirement
1 year access to our online video study system
1 year access to our live instructor help desk
1 year free reattendance (reattend the training as many times as you’d like!)
Practice Questions/Exams
Mastery Analytics
Study Guide
Memory Aids
PM-ProLearn's Certification Exam governed by CSSC
Ability to test 3 times in one year if needed

Many employers offer benefits like tuition reimbursement programs that will pay for your certifications. Check with your HR executive to see if you qualify. Some employers we've worked with include:

Booz Allen

Northrup Grumman

KPMG

General Dynamics
The military funding options you can use for the PMP are:

Army CA

Coast Guard COOL

AF COOL

Unit Funding

LSSGB Certification Funding Options

You may be eligible to get your certification at absolutley no cost to you. There are a number of funding options for both civilian and military personnel.

Talk to an advisor about our funding options and discounts for military and first responders.

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30% Off

Can't use any of the above funding options? Military members and their spouses may receive a 30% discount. Contact us to see if you qualify.

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Six Sigma Certification: (LSSGB) Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

What Is Agile
Project Management?