The Hidden Recipe to Guarantee PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Success
Hello there!
The Hidden Recipe to Guarantee PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Success. If you’ve found your way here, you’re probably looking for some secret sauce to help you conquer the mighty PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam.
As a seasoned PRINCE2 classroom trainer with years of experience, I’ve had the privilege of helping hundreds of students like you meet the passing score requirements.
Buckle up because I will share the hidden recipe to guarantee your PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam success.
Mastering the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Structure and Passing Score Requirements
Let’s begin by first understanding the structure of the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam.
The exam is a blend of questions to test your knowledge of PRINCE2 methodology and its practical applications. To achieve the passing score requirements, it’s vital to know the terrain before we venture forward, right?
Navigating the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Syllabus
The Seven Principles of PRINCE2
The seven principles form the backbone of the PRINCE2 methodology. These are your guiding lights, the beacon in the night that will guide your project no matter how stormy the seas get. Like Captain Jack Sparrow’s compass, they always point to what you need most to meet the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam passing score requirements!
The Seven Themes
The seven themes of PRINCE2 are akin to the tools in your project management toolbox. Each piece is significant and has its place in managing successful projects. Remember that one time you tried to hammer a nail using a wrench? It doesn’t work so well.
Like the themes, you must know when and where to apply each to achieve those passing score requirements.
The Seven Processes
Lastly, we have the seven processes. Think of these as the road map for your PRINCE2 journey. They guide you through the project lifecycle, from the start to the end, ensuring you get all critical milestones along the way.
They are your Google Maps in project management and crucial to meeting those passing score requirements!
Winning Tips to Ace the Exam and Meet the Passing Score Requirements
Understand, Don’t Memorize
Here’s the thing: PRINCE2 is about something other than rote memorisation. I’ve seen students cram for the exam the night before and let me tell you – it doesn’t end well.
PRINCE2 is a way of thinking, not a textbook to be memorised. Understanding this can help you meet those passing score requirements.
Practice with Mock Exams
Remember the first time you rode a bike? You fell a couple of times, right? It’s the same with PRINCE2. You need to practice, fail, learn, and practice again.
Use mock exams as your training wheels to help navigate those passing score requirements.
Real-World Application
Let me share a story. I had a student, let’s call him Paco. Paco struggled with the PRINCE2 concepts, finding it hard to apply them to the exam scenarios.
So, I advised him to relate the pictures to his work experience. This shift in perspective, from theoretical to practical, made a difference for Paco, especially when reaching the passing score requirements.
Preparation and Revision Techniques
In the race to PRINCE2 success and meeting the passing score requirements, slow and steady does win the race.
Plan your study schedule, revise systematically, and remember to use tools like flashcards for quick revision. Group study can also be a game-changer.
Fast-tracking to Your PRINCE2 Practitioner Pass!
First up, please remember that the typical questions and, indeed, the syllabus that covers the Foundation Exam also apply to the Practitioner Exam.
So, if you are preparing for your Practitioner Exam or are preparing for the re-registration exam – you must also revise those syllabus aspects covered in the Foundation Exam.
My second point is that the Practitioner Exam, being multiple choice style objective questions, will require considerably more reading of the question and background material. So, bring a highlight marker pen into the exam to emphasize any key points within the scenario, the extra information, and the background description for each question.
Do you remember the advice you are given at school? Answer The Question Asked – NOT What
You Would Like To Have Been Asked!
The PRINCE2 Practitioner open book exam
The only book you can take for the exam is the official PRINCE2 Manual. No other reference material is allowed.
But I do have some advice for you:
You can add your notes on the surface of the pages within the Manual before taking the exam itself. This includes the blank pages within the book as well.
As part of your revision, you will have highlighted critical points within the Book, perhaps underlining key points or using arrows or stars to draw your attention to a specific point.
You can use index tabs such as miniature post-It notes fixed to the page edges for easy and swift reference during the exam.
It is essential to know your way around the official Manual so that you can easily locate information as part of answering a particular question.
You must refrain from writing notes on paper sheets and include those within your
Manual. Neither can you cut out any other paper information and slip these into the Manual.
Remember to use your page markers to reference points within the Manual, feel free to add extra information to those tabs.
Answering the Practitioner Exam questions
Your Practitioner Exam will use the same approach to answer sheets as it did within the Foundation Exam. You will have pre-printed answer sheets with ovals for each answer, and you will put a thick pencil bar to the shape or fill it in thoroughly.
PRINCE2 Appendix A
This is a vital section of the official Manual, as many questions are asked about it. Ensure you understand not just what each section of each management product contains but the type of information you would expect to see within each section.
An example here is the Business Case.
It would be best to remember that there are sections within the Business Case, such as reasons and benefits. But what type of information would go into one and not the other?
Again, as an example, the reasons section will be based on history (the situation that caused the need for the project in the first place). In contrast, the benefits section relates to future information (the benefits you will expect to be realized due to passing the project’s products into an operational area (Business As Usual).
Practitioner Exam Time Management
The open book Practitioner exam duration is 150 minutes (2.5 hours), and there are 46 questions to answer – 35 standard and 11 matching.
The number of standard question items = 68
The number of matching question items = 11
Each matching question item has three items to be matched = 33
The pass mark is 38 marks/55%
The Practitioner Exam questions are there to test that you can:
- Apply and carry out using PRINCE2 and apply techniques and rules. Identify connections and relationships between concepts plus information provided to solve problems in the context.
- Assess and analyse information in context to conclude. Break the information into component parts, how they relate to one another, and PRINCE2, find evidence to support or oppose a course of action or reasoning.
It is an easy mistake to spend too much time on early sections only to find that you run out of time as the exam draws to a close. Rushing and losing marks on the final sections may be the difference between a pass and a failure!
PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Time Management
Here is my advice for planning the best time management:
You will need to have time to read the project scenario and understand it, so allow 5 to 10 minutes to read the various parts of the scenario information.
The exam duration is 2 ½ hours, which is 150 minutes
So, having read the scenario that will leave you with about 140 minutes – I recommend holding back 5 minutes as an emergency, so assume 120 minutes which gives you about 2 minutes per question.
I advise spending the first 10 minutes reading, understanding, and highlighting the scenario itself and then reading the additional information when given.
The length of the scenario information is typically between half and a full page.
You are at liberty to remove the staple from the paper if you wish so that you can have the scenario always open on your desk for quick and easy reference.
One of the critical causes of exam failure is not lack of knowledge but misreading the question – so do highlight or underline key actions within each question.
As an example, is the question asking when a product is created or when it is updated? – Your answer would be different in both cases.
This is another good reason to carefully manage your time so that you don’t rush as you approach the end of the exam and misinterpret what the question is asking.
There is no negative marking in the exam, so as a last-minute emergency strategy if it looks like you are running out of time, you have got nothing to lose; simply guess the answers to any remaining questions and shade them in on your answer sheet.
You never know; a few vital marks may be picked up this way, making the difference between failing and passing grades.
PRINCE2 Practitioner question styles
Because the Practitioner Exam is objective, expect TWO different question styles that need to be answered. This differs from the Foundation Exam, which has a standard for choices of potential answers for you to choose.
Standard style
Some Practitioner Exam questions have the same format as the Foundation. An example structure of this type of question would be a preamble which sets the scene and gives the question context, then the question itself followed by FOUR options, a), b), c), and d) of which only one is the correct answer.
Matching style
This type of question is where you link items in one list to items in a second list. There is only one correct response to each question item, but options from the second list may be used once, more than once, or not at all.
An example of such a question structure would be:
A preamble giving the context if appropriate, followed by the question setting out which option relates to each item of information, and then the instruction to chose one answer from options on the right.
Best PRINCE2 Practice exam technique
Please read the questions carefully. Do not rush them, and do not miss out on part of the question
Make sure you understand the question, as this can be misunderstood when reading faster or skimming.
Beware of seeking answers to the question before fully understanding what is being asked.
When given a choice of potential answers, make sure you systematically work through them all, even after you have found what you believe is the correct answer. It is always worthwhile to see if there is a better answer than the one you have easily chosen.
Consider negative questions such as “Which of the following is NOT a reason to…” It is straightforward to forget the negative perspective when looking at answer options and wrongly choose the reverse of the question being asked
Take care to answer any question that aligns with the approach or language used within the official PRINCE2 Manual. It is easy to trip up by answering how your organisation or previous experience would react rather than the official PRINCE2 Method.
Most questions will require that you consider the project scenario and the extra scenarios given for a particular topic. Remember that the exam is testing the objective way that you apply the PRINCE2 method within the scenario and its project lifecycle
It is easy to spend too much time on the earlier questions only to find yourself in a mad rush as you finish the final questions against the clock. This is where mistakes can happen and is due to poor time management during the exam. Remember to time-segment your answers as I have described earlier.
I have invigilated countless PRINCE2 exams, and there is one cause of failure which is not often mentioned yet does occur regularly. It is when a candidate misses out on a complete answer section – often the result of skipping the exam questions sequence to answer the question topics that the candidate feels more confident about.
The problem arises that the delegate may forget about the skipped section until the last handful of minutes before the exam ends, only to then, in a panic, desperately try to answer that forgotten section, and in the process misread or guess question answers.
This is probably the most catastrophic reason that leads to exam failure and has nothing to do with the candidate’s grasp of the subject matter. Do not let this happen to you!
Wrapping Up
Success in the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam comes to those who understand, practice and apply.
Use this hidden recipe, and I promise you, the PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam will feel less like a mammoth task and more like a steppingstone towards your project management success story.
Remember, preparation is the key to meeting the passing score requirements. As a great man once said, “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail”.
Keep going, keep growing, and best of luck with your PRINCE2 Practitioner journey and achieving those passing score requirements!
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