Going through the Prince2 Foundation Training and Exam in the UK
AG.YU，2008.07.09.

This is not general advice on how to pass a Prince2 Foundation exam. Rather, it is a specific record of how I did it through a training organization in the UK. Hopefully this is of interest to those curious about PRINCE2, and of help to those who want to take the exam.

People have mixed feelings about PRINCE2. Some think PRINCE2 is overly bureaucratic. Some decision makers claim that they only use the bits that suit them. Some simply shake their heads when hearing the word "Prince2" without bothering to find out what it is. I happen to have a budget with some money left this year. After consulting my boss, I decided to get properly trained on PRINCE2 so I am officially informed about PRINCE2.

Firstly I called a number of training organizations. Usually, the key PRINCE2 training is for the Foundation stage (3 days) and the Practitioner stage (Foundation plus two additional days). I initially planned to do the Foundation stage only. However, the pricing structure is such that booking both stages is more cost-effective. For the training organization I ended up with, the 3-day course is listed for £1,345 while the 5-day course for £1,695. I decided to go for both with a heavy discount of the total fee. The training company offers flexible booking so that I can take the two stages of training together in one week or separately in two slots so far I take them within 12 months.

Included in the training fees quoted above are the fees for relevant exams. There are two types of PRINCE2 exams: Foundation and Practitioner. It is cost-effective to rake exams with training. You can sit the exams without going to the training. The governing body for the exams is APMG, which offers "Open Centre" for those wishing to take PRINCE2 exams separately. The prices for doing so are http://www.prince2.org.uk/Qualifications/OpenCentreExaminations.asp):

PRINCE2 Exam Fees - 2008
Foundation = £195 (inc. VAT)
Practitioner = £360 (inc. VAT)
Both Exams = £555 (inc. VAT)

The Foundation exam lasts one hour, is a close-book exam (no book/folder allowed). The exam contains 75 multiple-choice questions. A candidate needs to get 38 answers right in order to pass. The Practitioner exam is more demanding, lasting 3 hours with essay questions. But it is an open book, which means you are allowed the PRINCE2 Manual (see below) without any additional sheets (you are allowed to highlight and write in the Manual, one reason for all PRINCE2 Manuals to be heavily defaced according to our tutor).

There is a certain amount of pre-course reading required. For that I received the PRINCE2 Manual (“Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2”, 4th edition, ISBN#: 0113309467), together with a workbook around 2 weeks before the course. The recommendation is to spend 15-20 hours going through the materials and doing some initial exercises. Some exercises in the workbook are quite sensible but others requiring you to relate PRINCE2 to your past project experiences are less so since the projects I have gone through never used PRINCE2 terminologies. This is a common feedback from other fellow delegates.

It turned out that, while reading the Manual beforehand is essential, the pre-course workbook is not used during the training. For the three-day training sessions, I was given a separate folder with the following sections:

- Section 1: A set of 130 slides the tutor goes through.
- Section 2: A Participant Handbook including some supplementary diagrams, key learning points, a project scenario that is used for setting exercises and finally the solutions for these exercises.
- Section 3: Two sample test papers for the Foundation exam issued by APMG and the corresponding answers.
- Section 4: A Participant Handbook for the Practitioner exam.

Since the training is only for the Foundation stage, Section 4 is not used in the time being.

We started at 9:30am for the first day of training, and finished at 4:30pm, with 45 minutes lunch break, and 15mins tea break in each of the half day. For Day 2 we started earlier at 9am, and finished at 4pm, and for Day 3 we started at 9am, and finished at 2:40pm, followed by the exam at 3pm. The delegates felt that it is a quite strenuous/intensive training course because of the volume of information to be absorbed. We were required to do quite a bit of reading in the evenings and attempt the two sample exam papers. Questions from the sample exam papers were discussed next day. Overall, the training was tightly scheduled and materials were fit for purpose.

PRINCE2 has 8 processes, 8 components and 3 techniques (based on PRINCE2 Manual, the 2005 Edition, see an independent review athttp://www.maxwideman.com/papers/prince2-05/intro.htm). The Tutor did not go through the materials according to the PRINCE2 Manual chapters. Instead, the topics are re-arranged in the slides provided which criss-cross different chapters. This no doubt reduces boredom during training, but does result in a level of confusion as for what is covered when. Of course, the delegates have the slides to go back to if necessary. Unfortunately, the slides from this training company do not cross-reference to the pages in the Manual.

There were 5 delegates in training together including me, a small cohort compared with other times, probably due to early July being a high holiday season in the UK. The small class provides plenty opportunities to interact with the Tutor. However, the tutor is not interested in discussing wider issues arising from the PRINCE2 Manual. In fact, the Tutor admits that she would not be allowed to hand out any slide that is not APM-approved. The Tutor does not use real-world cases to explain anything either. This fact throws some doubt on how much does APM make the attempt to develop the training materials based on real-world projects. I intend to write a separate critique of PRINCE2. One of the reasons that PRINCE2 is open to criticism is probably due to its failure to link up with project realities.

Towards the end of the 3rd day's training, we all sat our one-hour Foundation exam. It took me around 40 minutes to finish. I went down to the coffee room afterwards waiting for my result. Within less than 10 minutes, other fellow delegates all finished and came down. We exchanged a few comments, mixed with some swear words. It is re-assuring to hear the otherwise quiet ladies using swear words - it's a stressful time after all! We exchanged more feelings about doing exams so long after school (two fellow delegates are quite young really). Some worried that they had not passed. Shortly after 4pm, the tutor came down. "Congratulations", she said, "You have all passed!” To be honest, the exam is rather easy, especially if the pass mark is 50%. "Failure is not an option", the tutor warned us beforehand, as no one going through her trainings had ever failed! The tutor thoughtfully notified our results by putting a Post-it note on our desk covered by a sheet of paper so we don’t get a chance to compare our marks. I went back to the exam room, picked up the result note and said good bye to everyone before going home.

Post-training comments: Having done the training, and with a good few years of project experiences behind me, and with the project management courses I have taught and the research I have done, I can say responsibly that PRINCE2 has done something many of us want to do: that is to impose a general structure over a project environment. This structure is made of a set of concepts, processes and techniques. These entities are embodied in a series of “products”, or “documents” in our daily language. These documents/products might give people the impression that it is overly bureaucratic. It is true that it might be simplified for specific projects. PRINCE2 Manual does suggest "tailoring" to suit circumstances. However, even for a general project structure, there may be room for simplifying PRINCE2. Furthermore, my real concerns on are in the areas of the assumptions and theories underlying the concepts, processes and techniques in PRINCE2. I intend to write a separate article to address these concerns at a later date.
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