Finding Out What Went Wrong
Before going on to prepare for another attempt, it pays to do some analysis of what went wrong last time, so you can avoid falling into the same hole again. If you attended a training course, do talk to your course tutor. Your tutor may be able to indicate problem areas based on an assessment of your understanding and recall during the course.
In my company, Inspirandum, we almost never get failures at Foundation, and we’ve looked very carefully at those – usually few – instances where we get Practitioner failures. The cause is nearly always exam technique problems rather than technical knowledge, despite the exam preparation we put alongside practical teaching of the method. If you think that exam technique is part or all of the reason why you had difficulties, check out the following list to try to pinpoint one or more specific issues:
Did you read the questions carefully or did you do them in a rush – in other words, do you think you may have missed part of what a question was getting at or misunderstood part of it? You may have been reading too quickly because you felt under pressure of time or because you were a bit nervous.
Did you start looking for the answers to questions before you really understood what was being asked?
Did you work systematically through all the answers given? Even if you’re pretty sure you’ve hit on the right answer immediately, a glance at the other answers is worthwhile. If you’ve made a mistake, you’re likely to spot it if you check and see a second answer that’s right even though you’re only being asked for one. Finding a second right answer makes you go back and look at your first response again.
Did you pick up on negatives: ‘Which one of these is not a reason to escalate an issue to the Project Board?’ Or did you forget the negative perspective of such questions and latch on to a right answer, which was actually incorrect because it was a wrong one that you were supposed to be looking for?
Did you answer in line with a standard ‘PRINCE2 manual’ approach to the questions, or according to how your organisation has used the method in a non-standard way to meet particular project needs?
For the Practitioner exam, did you remember to refer to the main project scenario as well as the extra scenario for particular sections?
Again for the Practitioner exam, did you answer questions related to the scenario but without looking closely enough at the scenario? In other words, do you think you might have missed key information about the project, and that’s why you got answers wrong?
Did you manage your time well across the whole paper, or were you in a rush in the last questions, where you might have made mistakes and so failed to score marks?
Do you know that you missed some questions out and didn’t have time to go back to do them later?
Finding holes in your knowledge
You can do a couple of things to find gaps in your knowledge. The first you can tackle now and the second you can do as you work through this book revising the different subject areas.
A first check is to think systematically through the method and ask yourself whether you really understand that area. Usually you’ll realise that you don’t understand it, or that you had an inkling you don’t. Ask yourself whether you went into the exam hoping that certain things wouldn’t come up. If you did, then this fact alone indicates you were unsure of those areas.
Using the revision checklists in this book
In each of the theme and process chapters in Parts II and III of this book, you’ll find revision checklists. As well as the lists providing a structure for revision, you may find them helpful for checking quickly to see whether you are unsure of any areas.
Do be wary of the Quality theme. It’s a strange part of the PRINCE2 manual, being very focused on definitions rather than on the implementation of quality management throughout the method. As a result, a lot of people feel unhappy about it even when their knowledge is fine for the exams.
Looking out for questions where you can’t see why you’re wrong
The second thing to do to find gaps in your knowledge is to watch out for questions that you get wrong when practising. If, when you see the answer, you say to yourself ‘Oh yes, of course,’ then you know PRINCE2 well enough and it isn’t a problem – you probably just misread the question. But if you can’t immediately see why you’re wrong, then it indicates a gap in either your knowledge or understanding.
Finding holes in your understanding
Gaps in your understanding of PRINCE2 will cause you a problem in both the Foundation and Practitioner exams. This is trickier than a hole in knowledge. If you really don’t understand the ‘whys’ and you’ve been on a training course, it indicates that perhaps the training course wasn’t as good as it was cracked up to be. It isn’t always easy to spot a sub-standard course in advance, since you take it on trust that your trainer will know the subject. Some people spot a problem during the course though, and realise that they haven’t learned the method properly despite the assurances of their trainer.
In my company, we always teach a full Practitioner course, even if someone only wants to take the Foundation exam; they just leave the course after we’ve done the Foundation exam session and don’t stay on for the Practitioner exam. Personally, I don’t see the point of a ‘training’ course if you can’t then apply what you’ve learned. Lots of wasted effort in creating PRINCE2 paper mountains in projects demonstrates that often people don’t really know what they’re doing. One guy I taught already had the Foundation Certificate, having taken a course with another training company. He wasn’t happy, though, and searched around for a more practically focused company to do the whole of Foundation again as well as tackle the Practitioner. On attending my company’s event he said, ‘In the last course they just taught me the right answers to the questions. Sitting your course, I now understand why they’re the right answers.’
If that’s you, then you’re going to have to think the method through some more. You may also find the explanations in the companion book to this one, PRINCE2 For Dummies, helpful.
Hitting difficulties with question styles
If it was the style of the questions that threw you in your exam, then the answer is to practise a lot to gain familiarity with the formats. The formats are a particular issue at Practitioner level, where there are a number of different styles of multiple choice, not just the classic style as it appears in the Foundation paper. You’ll find lots of help with understanding the question styles in Chapter 2.
Timing out
If your problem is with time management and you simply didn’t have time to do all the questions, then don’t feel lonely. Timing out is a common cause of failure in the Practitioner paper, although occasionally in the Foundation as well. The good news is that you can do things about it.
If you have dyslexia or some physical limitation that makes taking exams difficult, you really should apply for the extra time allowance. You can find information in Chapter 1 on how to do this. Some people are a bit reluctant to apply for extra time, because they think it gives them some advantage. It doesn’t; the extra time is just to offset – at least partly – the effect of the limitation you have and to give you a fairer chance in the exam.
Everybody can do two other things to help tackle timing problems:
Milestoning. Watch the time carefully during the exam and stick to your schedule. Both exams have a set number of questions and a fixed time in which to answer them, so it’s relatively easy to monitor how you’re doing using the questions as progress milestones.
Practise against the clock. A really helpful idea is to practise exam questions within a time constraint, but pushing yourself harder to complete in less than the time allowed for the exam itself. For the Foundation paper, instead of allowing yourself the full hour to do 75 questions, set your timer for 45 minutes. For the Practitioner, instead of allowing yourself 15 minutes a section, set your timer to 12 minutes.
If you still find you’re unable to answer the questions in time as you get into your question practice, try to identify why that is. For Practitioner, are you looking up rather too much in the manual? If so, you need to do more revision to get more familiar with the method. Or are particular subjects causing you difficulty, such as the Quality theme or the Managing a Stage Boundary process? If so, target them for more revision. Or perhaps it’s the integration of the method that you find hard to deal with, and the fact that although you know the component parts of PRINCE2, you don’t understand how they fit together. In that case, head for Chapter 19 in this book and also read PRINCE2 For Dummies, to get a better overview of the method as a whole.