PRINCE2 Practitioner Exam Time Preparation

Examination Paper:

   --> Scenario Booklet: (1 scenario + possible additional information for specific questions)
   --> Question Booklet:
      (8 questions,
      each contains 10 question lines subdivided into parts,
      each part covers specific syllabus area identified at the beginning of the question)
   --> Answer Booklet

Syllabus:

Area	Themes	Process Groups	Others
	1- Business Case	1- Starting up a project Initiating a project	Overview
	2- Organization	2- Directing a project Managing a stage boundary Closing a project	Principles
	3- Quality	3- Controlling a stage Managing product delivery	Tailoring PRINCE2
	4- Plans
	5- Risk
	6- Change
	7- Progress
Examined	6 out of 7	2 out of 3	- Not examined - May be included in other questions

Timing: (2h30)

Activity	Scenario & Overall	Q1	Q2	Q3	Q4	Q5	Q6	Q7	Q8	Tolerance
Minutes	10	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	15	20
Accumulative	0h10	0h25	0h40	0h55	1h10	1h25	1h40	1h55	2h10	2h30

Grading:

80 Qs for 80 marks
Pass: 44 marks (55%)


Good luck!



* Some content is based on information from Axelos PRINCE2 Practitioner Examination Candidate Guidance ver 1.12

Microsoft Project Printing Gantt Chart without Tasks Table

The key here is to hide the Tasks table :)

View Menu --> Tables --> More Tables --> New --> No Info Table with ID column of 0 width.

Then you can print freely, where the Tasks table will not be present.

To show again the default tasks table:

View Menu --> Tables -->

Show time: PMI INPD CoP webinar: Product Team Performance Study Findings (Greg Geracie & Matt Jackson) [Tuesday 20th January, 2015]

You can join us on:

http://inpd.vc.pmi.org/Webinars/ViewWebinar.aspx?WebinarAction=View&WebinarExternalKey=9a84c4ab-6d08-461d-9dbf-2b61b9e14c34

This is PMI members exclusive content; moreover, for credential holders, 1 PDU can be automatically claimed against this activity.

Show time: PMI INPD CoP webinar: Processes that Accelerate Time to Market (Peter Fritz & Norbert Majerus ) [Thursday 18th December, 2014]

You can join us on:

http://inpd.vc.pmi.org/Webinars/ViewWebinar.aspx?WebinarAction=View&WebinarExternalKey=ed038741-0e53-46bd-865b-ec40611c5eb0


This is PMI members exclusive content; moreover, for credential holders, 1 PDU can be automatically claimed against this activity.

Show time: PMI INPD CoP webinar: Simplifying Innovation: A Framework for Finding Hidden Innovation Capacity (Mike Dalton) [Tuesday 19th August, 2014]

You can join us on:

http://inpd.vc.pmi.org/Webinars/ViewWebinar.aspx?WebinarAction=View&WebinarExternalKey=29d3da4d-bc8e-4c32-8d4f-ddd9ac7af873


This is PMI members exclusive content; moreover, for credential holders, 1 PDU can be automatically claimed against this activity.

Seasons for the year

During meetings discusing projects, it happens that when we start scheduling the tasks, a meeting member proposes switch a task from the next month August into autumn...! But at which month does autumn starts?!

When I searched I found that for the northern hemisphere, the seasons of the year are:


Winter:   December, January, February 

Spring:    March, April, May

Summer: June, July, August

Autumn:  September, October, Novemebr

Business Tip: Ask rather than criticize!

This is based on professional experience in different situations, and this is especially true when on meetings which involves more than you and the other side. Although, even some managers are very self-confident or at this point, you can say they are totally stubborn about their own ideas. The defensive systems for those personalities are so easily triggered by the least of a criticism for their actions.

The proposed solution I approached for working around this challenge while maintain the liberty of my ideas is to prepare questions which externally interrogates the details, and the consequences of a decision, and internally challenges the success and the validity of the core idea. I know that looks confusing at first; however, by comparison to the straightforward method of revealing your point of directly reveal the points of criticism, you will discover that it deserves the effort.

During one of our staff meetings for one of my employers, staff at different levels were invited to get buy-in for a new project to be implemented. The project itself looks appealing, and the CSF (Critical Success Factors) were neatly presented; however, it lacks a very important aspect of laying out a baseline for several metrics to be able to later on measure its success. This same point got my attention as well as another colleague, who had an earlier opportunity than me to take the floor. He started his words by interrogating about the current state before the project implementation and how this project might not introduce a value at all. Of course, the manager was surprised with the question and she pointed him to the clear project objectives and started over listing the benefits for this project. On my turn, I started by valuing the CSF and showed my interest to have an overview about the current baseline and the other metrics which are in place to make sure that this project is going towards success. The manager gratefully welcomed my questions and she reworded it in her own words, then asked her assistant to note it. Although I did not get an answer up till now, but I succeed in the first place to draw the attention of everyone to the value of my point, without at the same time challenging the efforts this manager and other  stakeholders are putting in this project.

Success Story: Software upgrade with no business disruption!

Business Case:
- Obsolete S\W product that requires maintenance\upgrade to maintain business efficiency.

Requirements:
- New reporting requirements which could not be easily developed within the old system. (High Priority)
- New bug fixes and requirements which could not be easily developed within the old system. (Medium\Low Priority)

Challenges:
- All existing data to be maintained.
- All existing data to be migrated as the seed for the data in the new system.
- Insufficient resources to build\purchase a new replacement.

Solution Workaround, short term:
- Reports developed directly from the old DB and delivered to the business unit.

(Some time...)

Solution Workaround, Medium term:
- Developing a new DB as an infrastructure for the new system.
- Developing and deploying an integration service to migrate scheduled update from the old to the new DB.
- Developing and deploying the new reports using state-of-the art technology and based on the new DB.

(A year or so here...)

Solution, Long term: 
- Building a new replacement S\W with all the new requirements.
- Depreciating the migration service.
- Depreciating the old S\W.

PMP compliant project management document templates

The following is a very useful source for practical templates to use for applying what have studied within  PMP PMBok.

Templates are organized by process group:
Project Management Docs (Free Project Management Templates)