Prince 2 Exam- What to expect?

**SteelyDan** · 13 December 2013, 15:02

To put into context; friend of mine who worked in office admin decided she wanted to do PRINCE2. She attended a similar 5 day course and passed it. She never had, and never has since, run a project. She now has 'the badge'. HTH.

**kal** · 13 December 2013, 15:07

Originally posted by SteelyDan View Post

To put into context; friend of mine who worked in office admin decided she wanted to do PRINCE2. She attended a similar 5 day course and passed it. She never had, and never has since, run a project. She now has 'the badge'. HTH.

+1, seems like a lot of people these days have the paper qualification with no experience to back it up, I would say its of little value unless you do...

**CoolCat** · 13 December 2013, 15:11

when i did it (it may have changed?) there are two parts

the first exam is after the first 3 days, and is straight multi choice, ie pick one from 5 etc. this exam is pretty easy.

the second exam is after the 5 days, and is again multi choice but its something like pick 2 out of 6, so the odds of picking the correct 2 are much worse than 1 in 5 as per the earlier test. this means you actually have to pick the right answers...

however both exams are "open book" and you sit there with the text book in front of you, so all answers can be looked up (but you would run out of time if you did it all that way).

of course its testing the easy often needless bureaucracy which is PRINCE2 and not the hard part about being a PM such as the people side, how to handle difficult stakeholders, how to fire fight, how to make decisions, experience of similar situations etc.

and yes any raw grad should be able to pass, you dont need to be any good at anything other than listening to the training.

**northernladuk** · 13 December 2013, 15:26

Coolcat's experience sounds like me. Just bear a few points in mind.

They will teach you how to pass the exam. That includes feeding you past papers, giving examples they have seen in exams before and constantly referring back to the exam. You can annotate your book as much as you want so do so. Every comment be makes note it in your book. My class put sticky notes on all relevant pages he pointed out and it was pretty accurate. Do whatever they say and make a note of everything. They gave us page marking post it notes to put on useful pages. Not sure if they all do that but see if you can get some to take just in case. Take some bigger ones to put in the books as well. My book didn't have much space for annotations in the margins.

He will probably give you past papers to test the multi-choice element. In my day there was a very high repetition of questions from old papers. Using the few they gave me in the course and some I got of the web I would say more than half were duplicated. Pretty easy though so don't worry but if you do have practice ones then learn them by heart.

They will go through a few examples of the second exam. Copy them verbatim in to your book if you can. In my session one worked example was asked almost word for word in the test. We went through a similar question for the 2nd one as well so piece of piss.

Biggest mistake you can make is think you know it and not take notice of the guy. You will still probably pass but it will be harder work. They take pride in their pass rates so they will do everything they can to get you through.

Saying all that someone will come on in a second and tell us that the format has changed considerably lol....

**Zero Liability** · 13 December 2013, 18:35

Originally posted by SteelyDan View Post

To put into context; friend of mine who worked in office admin decided she wanted to do PRINCE2. She attended a similar 5 day course and passed it. She never had, and never has since, run a project. She now has 'the badge'. HTH.

Whenever I have approached agencies on this, they seem far less bothered about Prince 2 than they do about experience in PM. Same goes for banking, you can have the FPC or CEFA but it still is just there to pass a requirement, rather than something that will get you hired. Obviously better to have it than not but experience seems to matter far more, since you are being paid for your expertise more than anything else.

**rurffy** · 16 December 2013, 12:14

Thanks all for your post - I will definately go for the 5 day course, get the cert now then look forward to experience later on.

**original PM** · 16 December 2013, 12:19

Great - just do yourself one favour when you do get a PM role pretty much forget everything Prince2 told you to do..

just a tip

**Old Greg** · 17 December 2013, 19:06

I found this e learning course very good. http://www.knowledgetrain.co.uk/prin...plus-exams.php

**TykeMerc** · 17 December 2013, 19:50

Originally posted by original PM View Post

Great - just do yourself one favour when you do get a PM role pretty much forget everything Prince2 told you to do..

just a tip

True to a (fairly large) extent.

I'm currently working on a programme where they have several new PM's most of whom are fresh off the Prince2 assembly line and have no practical experience above admin support roles in projects. I'm shying away from trying to teach them how to manage projects, but most have the common sense to ask when they get stuck, one however is constantly quoting the Prince2 manual page references (from memory) and has no idea. Pointing out that process isn't an industry is as far as I go, but if asked I try to add a little steer now and then.

Prince2 is NOT an instruction manual and a course will NOT teach you the fundamentals of project management, process can support bits of the project, but not offer real answers and solve problems.

Prince 2 Exam- What to expect?