Prince 2 Foundation and Practitioner

I'm looking at doing Prince 2 in the near future and was wondering what the best approach is - do both in one week, spread it out - what is the best pre-course work etc etc.

Anyone got any wise words of advice?

Cheers

there's alot to prince .... you'll need more time

there are courses in the TNT mag, that are like you pay us £££ and we guarantee a pass... they look good

The Prince 2 foundation is piss easy....

 It can easily be done in a week and there isn't much pre-course work to do...

 To be honest you can probably download the study books off the net using torrents...but that's illegal!!! 

I'm not sure if you can even sit for the exam without going to a course - If you can, then get the coursebook (legally ) and don't even bother going to a course.

 As for the Practitioner well from what I hear it's a lot harder and requires a lot more work so if I was you i'd look at doing a course for that.

I have heard of some people doing both in one week - sounds a bit intense to me.  Not fussed about paying for course study books as my company will fund it. 

Just need some advice as to which ones are the best to get.

I did both in one week on a residential course in Chester. There is a lot of work but it was manageable (including the evenings in the bar to socialise). The foundation is p*ss easy - just tick boxes. Do them both and get it over with IMO.

I did the week long Foundation and Practioner course this summer with QA-IQ. It was a moderately interesting course with a great lecturer - interesting to see the mechanisms of project management from an academic perspective. I wish I had got all the pre-course reading done before I started though!

Foundation is fairly easy as long as you swot a bit as it's just parrot-fashion repetition of the "Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2" manual, more-or-less. Practitioner is a bit more applied so you'll have to work a little harder at 'getting it'. Either way they're not ultra-hard, they just require a bit of studious elbow grease.

Try reading up on Six Sigma as well.

I did the Foundation and regretted not doing the Practitioner (my old company wouldn't pay the difference). Format is that you all study as a group, sit the foundation multi choice exam at the end of Wednesday and have to pass that to do practitioner... the foundation is pretty straight forward if you've done the pre read, sat and understood the course and have a bit of PM experience you'll be fine. If you fail, they can make provision for a re-sit and the invigilator stays around for you to have another bash there and then.

When I did my course, there were 12 people attending. At the end of Weds the 2 of us who had not booked the practitioner left and the rest stayed on. The course leader said it's a real shame that you are off since the training is the same for all and on the Thursday it was just about working through some case studies, doing some exam prep and doing the 'big' exam Friday morning...

So annoyingly I had been as trained up as far as I needed to be in order to sit the practitioner exam but didn't... In hindsight I should have booked a couple of days leave and paid the few hundred quid extra myself.

Moral of this is that if you are sitting through the training to get you through the foundation at the end of Day 3, it would be daft to not do day 4 and then the exam on day 5 too.

Best of luck with it and don't forget to read up in advance and each night - a residential course is best for this.

I did Prince 2 distance learning with a company called ILX which was great, you just run through a CDrom and do all the exercises before having a 2 day course and the exam.

I also did Managing successful programmes with QAIQ which was really good, so they might be a good bet for Prince.

 Foundation is a breeze, you dont even have to study just have a brain. It does help to mark the books out, and learn the process maps by heart to speed things up during the exam..

Zod wrote (see)

I did the week long Foundation and Practioner course this summer with QA-IQ. It was a moderately interesting course with a great lecturer - interesting to see the mechanisms of project management from an academic perspective. I wish I had got all the pre-course reading done before I started though!

Foundation is fairly easy as long as you swot a bit as it's just parrot-fashion repetition of the "Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2" manual, more-or-less. Practitioner is a bit more applied so you'll have to work a little harder at 'getting it'. Either way they're not ultra-hard, they just require a bit of studious elbow grease.

Try reading up on Six Sigma as well.

I too did mine this year with QA-IQ.

I agree with Zod.

I didn't think it was too much to do in one week, you end up getting in the frame of mind for it and in fact it gets easier as the week goes on. Mainly as the practioneer is open book!!! It's also not written anymore, multi guess!

I didn't do any pre work, but I did stay away from home that week. Every evening there is a lot to cover. If I had gone home I would have ended up not doing much, due to kids/wife etc... But thats all I think you need to worry about.

Oh, and make sure that the book is all tabbed up before you start. Makes things easier and saves time on the first day!

Tabs are a great idea - I did that and it helped loads just in the course. 

I eventually found a self-study website ( £18) that, I used to study and prepare for both Foundation and Practitioner exams.  http://www.selfstudy.org.uk

The foundation was simple, it was ridiculous. The practitioner was very challenging, but I passed both.

I did both courses in a week. We sat the foundation course on the Wednesday afternoon and the practitioner exam on the Friday. I think it was better doing it that way as the foundation stuff was still fresh in my mind when I sat the second exam.

It was definitely intense, I can’t say I enjoyed it but I think it was well worth the effort.

Hi,

A lot of it depends on why you are looking to get Prince2 certified and how quickly do you want the certification?

I wanted to get certified as soon as so I enrolled on Firebrand Training's prince2 course.  The course was for 5 days - 2 days to get the foundation exam sorted out and  sat for the practitioner exam on the last day.

It was quite intense, but the mini-project helped me lots to grab the theoretical knowledge and apply it to real world examples. 

In terms of prep material I used to the following book:

Managing Successful Projects with PRINCE2® (2009 Edition)

Hi I'm considering using firebrand or QA to do my Prince2 course and am trying to work out which training provider will give me better value for money?!?!?!?

Anyone got any comments on these or other training providers?

Many thanks in advance