Handling Failure

Candidates who fail a PRINCE2 exam tend to have one of two reactions. The first is to be incensed and ask ‘How could that possibly have happened to me?’ They wonder whether the exam was marked correctly. The second reaction, and overwhelmingly the more common, is to say with resignation that they’re not surprised and at the end of the exam they already knew deep down that they’d failed.

To pick up on the question about whether the paper was marked fairly, well of course the answer is yes. Even where the Foundation exam is marked by hand at first, it’s cross-checked using machine marking – so there’s no space for human error in the final result. You may disagree with some of the ‘right’ answers if you see them, but, like in many other exams, that goes with the territory.

Putting the exams in context

If you’ve failed, the best thing to do is to come to terms with the outcome and accept it. If you try to see the situation as a setback rather than a disaster, it may help to put the exam results into context. The important thing in project management is running projects well, and the important thing in PRINCE2 is using the method knowledgeably and intelligently to do that. After putting in all the work to learn PRINCE2, it’s really good to have a piece of paper to put on the wall (or to shove in your filing cabinet), but pieces of paper don’t run projects.

At the end of the day, does it really matter that you failed? Worse things happen to people every moment of every day. It may be disappointing not to have passed and it may be inconvenient, but it isn’t life-threatening.

If you were relying on an exam pass to get a new job or contract, then things are a bit tougher and there’s no easy answer to that. Instead, all I can do is to encourage you to go for it again and, provided you have a good grip of PRINCE2, to do so quickly.

It’s rare indeed to see someone I’ve taught fail the Foundation exam. But I do see occasional failures at Practitioner. One manager failed the Practitioner and never took it again, much to my disappointment. However, he’s been responsible for setting up the use of PRINCE2 within his large company, and it’s one of the most intelligent and effective implementations of the method that I’ve seen. Another person I taught decided that he wasn’t ready to take the Practitioner exam, although he was booked in to do it as part of the week-long course. He never did feel ready and never did sit the exam. However, he’s been hugely successful in running projects with PRINCE2 and has used the extremely powerful product-led planning approach in new ways that would blow your socks off if you saw it; he’s done so on substantial projects, too. If you want to see a bit of what he’s come up with, read PRINCE2 For Dummies!

Having a bad time with a Foundation paper

If you know PRINCE2 well and just have a bad day with a particular exam paper and fail, you can probably take the exam again immediately. Currently, it’s normal practice for a spare paper to be included in the Foundation exam pack. If something goes badly wrong and you fail, you’ll probably find that you can stay on for an extra hour and sit another paper.

Deciding on whether to take the spare paper depends what you think caused the problem. It rather depends on whether you thought your initial failure was just a paper going wrong for you or whether it confirmed what you already suspected: that you hadn’t really got things clear yet.

If it was just that the paper went wrong, then taking it again immediately is a good idea. If you thought you had a good chance and are only planning to do Foundation, another shot straight away is a good option. Also, if you’re attending a training course and were planning to do the Practitioner paper during the same training event, then it’s probably better to take the Foundation again straight away and move on through to the Practitioner.

If, however, you don’t feel that you’re knowledgeable enough in your answers, it may be better to go away and hit the books for some more revision before trying again. Perhaps, for example, you’re one of those people, like me, who tends to learn more slowly than some but then remembers the information for years and years. If there’s an issue with your knowledge and understanding, going away for a bit more study first is probably a better idea.

I had an aeronautical engineer on a full PRINCE2 course who asked intelligent, relevant questions throughout the event and who clearly understood things well. He was equally good in reviews during the week. However, when he took the Foundation he failed. He was a bit surprised, but I was in shock. I’ve only seen a few people fail Foundation over the years, and I can usually see it coming. I marked his paper twice more to make sure I hadn’t miscounted or put the plastic overlay sheet in slightly the wrong position. I talked to him about it and offered the back-up paper, and he decided to go for it. He was an intelligent man but said he had struggled with the wording on that particular paper and had difficulty seeing what the questions were getting at. He thought that a second go might do the trick, and it did. He not only passed at the second attempt, but passed with a strong mark which was in line with my evaluation of his understanding of the method.

Looking forward, not back

If you’ve failed an exam and it’s not the sort of quickly fixed Foundation problem described in the last section, then rather than spending time and emotional energy being disappointed about the past, turn your attention instead to the future. Focus on what you can do to pass next time and pass well. Remember that if you failed you were, obviously enough, under the pass mark, so that even if you’d got a few more marks, and just enough to pass, you’d only have scraped through. What you need to concentrate on now is passing strongly.

If you failed by only one or two marks, it’s easy to keep dwelling on it and thinking, ‘If I’d just got two more, I’d have passed.’ You can turn that negative around to a positive by thinking instead, ‘I’m very nearly there and I only need to do slightly better next time to get through.’