 Hi, and welcome to the Prince II Practitioner course. In this particular course, we're going to build on your foundation skills to help you adapt and apply Prince II principles within a particular project setting. We're going to go through and talk about how the different phases of the project, the different themes, and the different processes work together to support a successful project execution from startup through the overarching direction of the project, through initiation, being able to manage and control the individual stages, being able to produce the products associated with the project, and then ultimately being able to finish the project and close it out successfully. I'm glad that you've chosen this course to learn how to practice these skills and how to effectively take what Prince II offers you a very specific methodology and how to in being able to effectively execute projects consistently and successfully. I'm glad that you chose the course. We look forward to working with you to help you learn how to run your projects more effectively and especially to prepare you for your Prince II certification exam. Hi, and my name is Patrick Funschlag, and I'm going to be the instructor for your Prince II Practitioner course. I've been working in IT and business management for more than 25 years. I have a lot of experience working with disciplines like IT service management, project management, governance, and service and software development life cycles. One of the reasons I got interested in Prince II is because Prince II answers a very important question. How exactly is it that we should effectively run a project? There's obviously been tremendous guidance for many years through things like the Pembok around what needs to get done. But one of the things that Prince II specifically does so well is describe the key how-to activities that have to take place, what core kinds of documentation needs to get done, and what needs to be in that. What kinds of communications need to be put in place? What kinds of risk management methodologies need to be put in place? What kinds of change controls need to be put in place? And how do we coordinate the management levels between corporate and program management, project board oversight and direction, the effective day-to-day management of the project, and the execution of the project work products? So one of the things I hope you'll see is how specifically Prince II provides you specific guidance on the methods to carry out to make your projects more successful. I'm glad that you've chosen this course, and I hope that you enjoy it. In this chapter, we're going to take a look at how the course is structured, talk a little bit about frameworks, different standards, and methodologies, and specifically how Prince II is used in practice to help execute projects successfully. We'll then look at applying Prince II in specific contexts and how you need to tailor it to fit the appropriate structure of the projects that you're trying to work. Let's take a look at each of these. In this lesson, we're going to look at the structure of the course itself. Talk a little bit about the planning that you're going to want to make to doing studying and preparation for the Prince II practitioner exam. Talk a little bit about how to use the course materials to your optimal success, and then help you get started in studying and learning about Prince II. This particular course is for the practitioner exam for Prince II. In order to sit that exam, you should have already completed and passed the Prince II Foundation exam. But you may have done that some time ago as well. So when we go and review the materials in this course, we're certainly going to review things that you would have seen in your foundation's program. Having a good core structure of the key principles, themes, and practices within Prince II is very fundamental to your success, as is your familiarity with the managing projects with Prince II materials, which you can use on the open book exam. As part of participating in this course, one of the benefits is that you get access to an integrated mentoring community for IT service management, project management, and software development lifecycle methodologies called MyITSM Mentoring Community. If you have access to the LinkedIn community, go to My Groups and enter the name MyITSM Mentoring Community. And please feel free to join, share your information, and take advantage of a lot of frequently asked questions and other key benefits of the community. One of the things I want you to think about as you're starting to work your way through the course is why exactly this is useful for you in your organization's context. Each of you have different learning experiences and different learning preferences. So take advantage of the course. Take advantage of the actual materials and of your Prince II book in looking at how you bring those together to make this an optimal learning experience for you. In particular, look at specific opportunities to take concepts within the course and utilize them as appropriate in your organization and learning environments. And be clear with yourself about what your goals and objectives are in being able not only to pass the examination successfully, but to be able to effectively utilize Prince II in an appropriate way in your environment to improve your project's performance. One of the key learning methodologies that are utilized in this program and many, many other learning courses is called Bloom's Taxonomy. The idea of Bloom's Taxonomy, of course, is that different courses prepare people to engage with material in different levels. In your foundation's training, these engage in what we call Bloom's level one and two, knowledge and comprehension, essentially what are a bunch of terms and capabilities and how and more or less are they used in a broad context like Prince II. As we work our way into the practitioner level courses, however, we work to more complicated levels and levels three and four, they're very specifically interested in our ability to use these capabilities in a particular scenario or context. So you'll see both in the examination and in the real world, the skills that you'll learn here in Prince II Practitioner are going to help you specifically analyze particular situations and apply these techniques in a way that makes sense. As you begin your practice in preparing for the Prince II Practitioner exam, it's important for you to think about your expectations, to be able to work and collaborate with people in the mentoring community, any of your peers who may also be working on these same programs, and then the materials themselves. Again, there are many, many resources available to you from your course materials to the course itself to the mentoring community and peers and other people around the world who are either preparing for or have successfully taken this examination in the past. There is a wealth of information on the public internet as well that you can leverage and use as part of your preparation. A few reminders and suggestions as you're preparing for your lesson plan. Like a regular classroom experience, most people benefit when they're doing self-paced e-learning programs when they establish specific hours of the day or week to do their learning and training, to be able to plan where appropriate breaks and times for you to get away, just like you would in a regular classroom situation, and where possible to try to keep various types of interruptions and other electronic devices away so that you can focus your energy on the things that we're talking about together. One of the other things I'm gonna encourage you to do is to establish and then execute a specific plan for your study, just like you would any other project. Establish milestones for your knowledge and skills. Establish different activities where you can review your skills and capabilities, perhaps including the review checkpoints at the end of each of our sections and the full practice examinations as well. And then where necessary, revise your plan so that you can effectively prepare for the exam. Throughout this course in the course where we make fairly extensive use of different structures and iconography to help you put a lot of these ideas in context. Each of the main chapters identify a series of learning objectives, key terms that you need to be deeply familiar with when it comes time for the examination, as well as icons that call out various definitions, notes, examples of how these are practically used in the real world and so on. At the end of each chapter, we'll provide you a set of checkpoint quizzes that you can use to test your knowledge and skills, and identify any key areas that you want to be able to review. Likewise, we encourage you to take full advantage of the two practice examinations provided by the accreditor, and to be able to use those not only to get familiar with the exam structure and content, but also to get comfortable using your managing successful projects with Prince II book as part of preparation for the open book exam. There are three levels of Prince II qualification. Most of you by now will have earned your Prince II Foundation certificate, and that is a required prerequisite before you can sit the Prince II practitioner examination. Prince II practitioner is used to help confirm that you can effectively adapt and apply the skills in Prince II to a particular project situation, and then the highest level credential called Prince II Professional allows you to demonstrate your expertise to be able to manage an entire Prince II project across the entire life cycle. This course is a preparation for the Prince II practitioner exam. Prince II practitioner provides eight questions, just eight questions, over two and a half hours. Each of the eight main questions provides 10 specific items within those, and each of those items is worth one mark, and they test different aspects of using Prince II in that particular situation. In order to pass the examination, you're required to gain 44 marks across the exam or a 55% result. Unlike many other exams that you may have taken, this particular exam is an open book exam. You can actually bring your copy of Managing Successful Projects with Prince II 2009 edition with you and utilize it during the examination period of time. One of the things we're going to do throughout this course is to make reference to where certain key information lives in that book so that you can make effective notes of that and have that available to you when it comes time to sit the open book exam. As you get ready to commence your studying for Prince II practitioner, again, it's very important to establish your study plan based on your preferences and needs, whether you're working an hour a day or trying to do several longer term sits to go through the material. Take the time to make sure you're clear on what you need to know relative to each chapter. Be comfortable with the terms and concepts. Understand that these may be very familiar terms and concepts, even if Prince II uses slightly different language to describe them that you may use in your regular project environment and within your office. Keep in mind, of course, that Prince II is a particular methodology. You may or may not particularly like certain approaches that Prince II takes. You may not agree with them, but when it comes time to taking the certification exam, it's their exam. And so it's very important to answer the questions consistent with their expectations and goals. So remember always, the certification exam is about how Prince II would tell you to handle a particular situation, not necessarily what you specifically would do, period.