PRINCE2 Foundation & Practitioner Course – Day 3

Any signs of deviation beyond tolerance levels must be escalated

08:30 – like yesterday, we start with a review of last night’s homework. There’s a notable air of rising tension in the room, as we all await the real test this afternoon.

09:30 – We go through Controlling a Stage and Managing Product Delivery, and then there’s a quality bit. No, really, I mean a QUALITY bit (not that the rest was rubbish), looking at the Quality Review process.

10:30 – after coffee (and a Twix finger this time), it’s on to Change Control. This culminates in a genuine team exercise, with the people on my team being completely unable to decide whether the scenario issues are problems, change requests or off-specifications.

The pace picks up. We are rattling through the remainder of the syllabus, covering Managing Stage Boundaries, Exception Reports and Plans, and how to deal with deviation (most harshly, I would have thought - can't have these deviants carrying on with their filthy practices). Just before lunch, we finalise things (appropriately enough) with the Closing a Project process. Strangely missing is the essential sub-process which I remember vividly at the end of one banking project I ran back in 1999 – take all the contractors into a room one by one, give them a black bin liner for their stuff, and tell them to f*ck off.

12:30 – lunch was a slightly varied buffet today, but still excellent. Jam doughnuts for desert.

13:00 – post-lunch, there’s an overall review, process by process, while gallows humour predominates among the delegates.

14:00 – the exam. We have to clear our desks, and then we get a question paper and an answer matrix. It’s standard multiple choice stuff – you have to make an “X” in the chosen box. To my mind, the biggest challenge looks like ensuring your answering stays in sync with the question sequence – miss one, and you get everything wrong thereafter. What is really surprising is that it’s all done on paper – I would have thought an online version would be so much simpler and quicker to administer.

As I start, I find myself gripped by a growing sense of horror. The two test papers I had rattled through on Monday and Tuesday evening, and managed a comfortable score without trying very hard, as the answers simply jumped out at me. But this, the real exam, is much, much harder – the questions are full of ambiguity and convoluted logic. On my first pass through, I leave at least a dozen unanswered.

I managed my first pass though in about 30 minutes, more than twice as long as the mock papers had taken me. I then spend a good further 15 minutes puzzling over the skipped ones, before making a final check that my numbering sequence is correct. That’ll do. It’ll have to.

Outside, the delegates collect like condemned men.

16:00 - we are called back – and, incredibly, we have all passed (even the student – who really seemed like he’d lost the plot). Even more incredibly, we are given our scores, and I have come in only 1% less than I managed in the mock papers.

Six of our merry crew leave forever – they were just doing the Foundation course, which makes little sense to me.

The rest of us get a Practitioner course booklet – exam guidelines and sample questions. We have some to do tonight.

PRINCE2 Foundation & Practitioner Course – Day 2

The Configuration Librarian maintains strict control over releases (you naughty boy)

08:30 – an early start, and I only just make it. I suspect that I have the furthest to drive.

We begin with a review of last night’s homework – a mock Foundation paper. The lecturer takes us through it page by page, with delegates required to pipe up whenever they got a question wrong, so that they can feel like idiots / have the answer explained to them. As I didn’t get any wrong until question 40, I feel pretty smug at first.

One fact is blindingly clear: you may have read somewhere that “there are no trick questions in the PRINCE2 exams”. Well, that’s a lie – the mock Foundation paper (which consists of real questions) is full of sneaky double negatives, three-questions-for-the-price-of-one, and questions which look as though they’re asking about one thing, but are actually testing you on something else completely. Beware!

And, of course, multiple-choice is a double-edged sword. While it is true than even a retarded chimpanzee should be able to score 25%, on the other hand there is no scope for ambiguity, or for successfully arguing your case. Answer (a) is either right or wrong, score one or zero, circuit gate closed or open, that’s your lot. And, of course, there’s no opportunity to be a smart arse like the fabled philosophy student at my old Uni who, when confronted with an exam question that terrifyingly demanded “Why?”, answered succinctly “Why not?” and spent the rest of the afternoon in the union bar (according to the legend, the faculty were of course forced to award him full marks).

09:00 – we move on to the next topic: the IP process (you do know this is “Initiating a Project, don’t you?). And what is the first concern when initiating your project? Why, QUALITY, of course, with a capital K.

“Quality” is such an easy sell to the captains of industry, isn’t it? You can almost see the presentation – “Yes, gentlemen, quality is built-in from the very start of our PRINCE2 method – it’s our first concern”. But what, exactly, do captains of industry think of when they hear the word “quality”?

Traditional features like the bulls-eye air vents and the organ stop controls are exquisitely framed by brilliant veneers on the fascia, and the front and rear seat consoles. Premium grade leather hide is also employed to soft surfaces, including the trim around the sporting gear selector and steering wheel. Knurled brightware controls and a choice of premium wood veneers exemplify the craftsman’s touch

(The Continental GT interior, Bentley Motors website)

Not, perhaps, some pedantic w@nker picking holes in the grammar of your Business Case in a sweaty little meeting room somewhere.

Anyway, if you want QUALITY in your project, you’re going to need a Quality Plan (we all know that if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, right?). So, we cover how to put one of those together, and also PRINCE2’s rather sinister-sounding “Path to Quality”, which sounds a bit like a Scientology auditing session.

We do an exercise, where we all have to create a Quality Plan, based on the same running project scenario we worked on yesterday. I have to admit, mine was rubbish – some quickly scribbled notes on a torn sheet of A4 – nothing “quality” about it at all. But, that’s enough QUALITY for now.

10:45 – after a much-needed coffee break and, yes, a Club chocolate biscuit (I had no idea they still made them), we move onto Planning proper, and PRINCE2’S product-based planning technique. I think I finally get it now, especially as the lecturer makes clear that section 22.1 of the OGC manual (The four products of product-based planning) actually lists the products in the order they should be produced, which was not at all clear from my first reading. I do, at this stage, feel sorry for anyone on the course who has not already produced project plans using MS Project and the like, and this sort of knowledge is very much assumed.

12:30 – lunch is a similar buffet to yesterday (I’m not complaining – I just regret failing to bring along an Alan Partridge-style oversized plate, and so am forced to make that shameful second visit). Our break is enlivened by a nice sales lady giving us a presentation of the company’s other training products. Ho hum …

13:10 – back to work, and the planning session completes, followed by a bit about Project Controls, Configuration Management and setting up your Project Files (I must admit, I find this last bit of guidance re your project filing to be a bit pathetic – something PRINCE2 could easily do without). The only trouble with Configuration Management is that I keep having these thoughts about the Configuration Librarian …

15:30 – coffee break, and then we crack on with Managing Stage Boundaries, followed by the last exercise of the day – preparing a Product Description. We are allowed to pick any product around us, and (for some reason) most of us choose a plastic cup.

17:00 – end of day. Homework is another Foundation Exam.