PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner Exam Samples 

PRINCE2 Foundation Exam

The PRINCE2 Foundation Exam is a closed book exam which means you will take it without any reference material in front of you and it’s 60 minutes long and there are 60 questions to answer.

There are four question styles that may be used and I’m about to explain them to you but first, you need to know that the pass mark is 33 marks which is 55%

The PRINCE2 Foundation Exam is a multichoice question style, and fairly easy to pass (most folks do), the foundation exam questions only have one right answer

The graphic below shows the four question types.

The first is just a simple multi choice style. You get a question and four answer options of which only one is correct.

The second type provides four answer options with a separate list of combinations. The single correct answer is the correct combination.

The third type is a question with a hidden word or phrase within it, and you have four answer options to find the correct answer that completes the question statement.

Finally, you are given a question statement about a role and the answer options are the names of different roles.

PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam

The PRINCE2 Practitioner exam is two and a half hours in length and is in multiple-choice format.

Be aware that the multiple-choice questions vary in style, these are not the same as the more simple multiple-choice questions that the foundation exam contains.

The PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam is open book and this means of course the only material you can bring into the exam is the official PRINCE2 Manual.

You are allowed to mark that up in any way and scribble on any of the pages and put little mini post-it stickers in for easy reference, but you’re not allowed to include or stick down any type of extra information

During your PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam preparation, if you make any handwritten notes in the PRINCE2 Manual, then these can accompany you in the exam.

The only things that can be ‘pasted’ into the PRINCE2 Manual are those coloured mini-post-it note page or tab markers, which you can annotate for easier reference of the PRINCE2 Manual.

For example, you couldn’t print out a page of information
and insert it inside the manual you’ll be immediately disqualified.

The PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam is an open book exam and it lasts 150 minutes which is two and a half hours and there are 46 questions to answer

35 of them occur as what is known as standard questions and 11 are matching type I’ll explain in a moment, but before I do the pass mark is 38 marks yet again 55%

PRINCE2 Practitioner Standard Questions

So what do we mean about standard matching?

Well, the number of standard question items in the exam will be 68 and the number of matching question items equals 11

Now if you’re wondering why that’s a larger number than the 46 questions it’s because these particular question types will have for example three sections. I’ll show you examples in the coming screens so that each matching question has three items to be matched

So 3 11s are 33 what you’ve got to do is to apply and carry this out using PRINCE2 and apply the techniques and rules

In the exam, you’ll be identifying connections and relationships between
concepts plus information provided to solve problems in context

Above is an example of a standard question and you’ll immediately
recognize it as being very similar to the foundation exam in structure not in
depth of course

The example I’ve chosen here states:

“What should the recreation manager do as part of accepting a work package activity for the refurbished bandstand?”

Here, I’ve invented a particular scenario which you’ll get of course with the
practitioner exam and it’s either A or B or C or D so there’s a standard example.

What you’ll find is in the new exam is that you’ll be asked to assess and analyze information in the context in order to reach a conclusion

What the exam questions will be asking is to break down the information to the component parts, and then to understand how they relate to one another and PRINCE2.

Then you will find evidence to either support or oppose a course of action or reasoning

PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Matching Questions

Another type of practitioner exam question is called a matching example and they will tell you to which it relates to I’ve chosen one from the change theme:

This is an example of what you’ll find, and I quote:

“The launch event is planned to be held at a local hotel. Three weeks before the event is due to take place torrential rain causes severe flooding and the venue will no longer be available but an out-of-town upmarket hotel is available for hire but is double the price of the original venues”

So the examiner will just set a little sub-scene here and then describe the questions. So there are three actions being taken in response to the flooding, and the question asks which role from A to E should be responsible for carrying them out.

Choose any one role for each action – each role can be used once more than once or not at all.

So what you’ll get here is three questions and I’ve chosen these as number thirty nine forty or forty one simply where they occur within the structure of the exam.

What you need to do for each of these is to decide which one of these roles would be involved with each action.

Your PRINCE2 Exam Answer Sheets

Thanks to COVID, current exams are being taken online. But, I assume that once we are back to normal, those classroom-based exams will return.

In any event, here is the procedure for a classroom based exam.

Your answer sheets consist of sets of ovals, one for each question’s optional answer. You will be given a pencil, which you use to shade in your chosen answer.

WARNING. Shading these in does take a little time, and many candidates merely write or note their answer on the question sheet itself.

There is nothing wrong with this, but be aware, that when time is called, you do not have ‘extra’ time to do all your shading!

I once had the heart-rending responsibility to physically take the PRINCE2 practitioner exam papers off a delegate, as they did not shade any question in during the exam, and were frantically filling them in after I called full time.

Of course, I wrote a report to the examiner and asked for leniency. I won’t tell you whether the candidate passed or not, but it was a devastating mistake for him to make.

I recommend that you may prefer to mark up the question sheet as you go, and before you start the next of the nine practitioner exam questions – shade in your answer sheets!

PRINCE2 Practitioner exam sequence

You might be tempted to answer the PRINCE2 practitioner exam questions in an order of preference, but this can get dangerous. I strongly recommend that you do them in the order they are given.

I have two reasons for saying this:

Its an assumption on my part, but there may be some information or clues in earlier questions that may help you in later questions.

If you jump around and deviate to the question order, you may get near the end of the PRINCE2 Practitioner exam only to find that you miss-counted (or that you had forgotten to shade in certain answers), and you find that instead of having plenty of time, you are now panicking because you have an extra question to fit in… I have seen this happen time and again…

Choose Who Teaches You PRINCE2!

It’s vital for you to take training from an active PRINCE2 trainer like myself, after all, why not give yourself a deadly edge and one that will give you the best chance of a solid pass…

Want to know more to get the best PRINCE2 Training and Coaching? Visit our Projex Academy Licensed PRINCE2 Masterclass!

If you just turned up cold for the PRINCE2 Practitioner exam, and even if you knew PRINCE2 inside and out, you would certainly have a lot of hard work ahead of you to get good marks.

Get PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Practice as well as training!

Like most things in life, getting PRINCE2 Practitioner exam practice as well as mastering the PRINCE2 Method is vital to give yourself an excellent chance of passing the PRINCE2 Practitioner exam the first time!

Don’t leave it to chance, get your hands on my PRINCE2 Masterclass (where I give you a full-strength PRINCE2 Sample Practitioner exam questions and answers, including a detailed scenario and supplementary information – just like the real exam!

Oh, and by the way, the PRINCE2 Examiners have audited my PRINCE2 Masterclass including my Foundation and Practitioner exam questions and answers, and decreed them accurate and correct.

Ready to try some more PRINCE2 FOUNDATION / PRACTITIONER sample questions and answers?