RTFM Unit 1

Right, time to get on with some actual work, I suppose. Unit 1 of the pre-course study guide is not too scary; it covers amazing stuff such as:

• Check your course joining instructions for times, dates, location, and whether you need overnight accommodation (gosh, and here was I thinking I’d just sleep under a hedge).
  
• Familiarise yourself with the basic structure of OGC’s Managing Successful Projects With PRINCE2 (emm … it’s a big paperback book, nice glossy paper, black print with headers and diagrams in RED for some reason, not a lot of illustrations and precious few jokes).
  
• Read the various introductions (which set up various definitions, etc. – a PRINCE2 “customer” is not the same thing as newsagent’s “customer”).
  
• Read the Product Description Outlines in Appendix A.
  

Now, this last bit is informative. In practice, I suspect that the Product Description Outlines (i.e., document templates in normal English) will turn out to be the single most useful part of the PRINCE2 manual – they certainly were with METHOD/1, that late, unlamented IT project management method I used years ago. The big difference between PRINCE2 and METHOD/1, however, is that PRINCE2 defines 36 different types of “management product” (now, there’s an oxymoron for you), whereas METHOD/1 had … f-ing SHEDLOADS. So, yippee!!! Less is most definitely more.