Unlocking Exam Success

The three main keys to success are:

Knowing the method well

Revising thoroughly

Practising with sample questions

If you’re unclear on any part of the method and can’t fathom that bit of the manual, you might like to get a copy of the companion to this book, PRINCE2 For Dummies. Lots of people have commented very kindly that PRINCE2 For Dummies makes the method easier to understand and they’ve found it a real help when learning. It explains the method in a much more practical way than a manual can. For thorough exam preparation . . . well that’s where this book fits right in. To help you find relevant explanations in PRINCE2 For Dummies and the appropriate section of the PRINCE2 manual, cross references are included in the text of the book.

Practising with questions is essential. You’ll find practice questions throughout this book, but in addition sample papers are available from the PRINCE2 exam board. If you’re attending a training course or have purchased a distance-learning package, the practice papers should be given to you by your course provider. If you’re studying on your own, you should contact the exam administrators, APMG, for sample papers, because they can’t let you take an exam without you knowing what you’ll be facing. Again, APMG’s contact details are in the Introduction to this book.

If you think that you’re at a disadvantage with the exams because you don’t have significant project management experience, don’t worry. Having such experience can be a help, but remember that the exams are about PRINCE2 not project management. Many people who learn PRINCE2 and are successful in the exams work in areas such as project support or are managers who supervise staff running projects but don’t actually run them themselves. Strangely, perhaps, extensive project management experience can actually be a drawback if that experience has been with an approach that is significantly different to PRINCE2. Such people often have to do some ‘unlearning’ before they can take on board the detail of PRINCE2. When learning PRINCE2 then, you’ll find things easier if you forget the past and focus on how the method works.

A second point for learning the method well, and related to the point made in the last paragraph, is to temporarily forget about your own projects. The human brain works powerfully by trying to relate everything new to something that is already familiar. That can really work against you here. While you’re learning PRINCE2, try not to work out how to apply the method to past projects or indeed your current project. Over the years, I’ve seen a few people fail to heed that warning only to lose the thread completely and become thoroughly confused. At the point that they’ve reached, it seems the method won’t work well on their projects and they get distracted from learning as they try to think through how they might fix it. Actually, things later in the method resolve the apparent problems. It’s a much better strategy for learning to focus first on learning PRINCE2. Later, when you thoroughly understand the method and how it all fits together, you can go on to consider how you’ll apply it to your live projects, adjusting it if necessary.