Although I’m unfamiliar with specifics about Prince2, I have come to the position that I never endorse short “boot camps” for any certification.

I had bad experiences with people doing this for the MCSE certification back when it was popular, and I’m seeing the same thing now. These boot camps enable people to memorize enough to pass the test, but their lasting impact and real benefit is greatly diminished when you compare it with a sustained regimen over a period of months.

I’m always interested in other opinions, but I’m skeptical that you will be able to persuade me to change my mind on this issue.

I’m an approved PRINCE2 trainer here in the UK and have been delivering training on PRINCE2 for the last 3 years. For any work these days in the UK in a project management role, then the PRINCE2 Practitioner qualification is a must-have. It is a requirement in almost all PM-related job adverts these days.

Whilst it used to be only used in the public sector, interestingly, it has been adopted by more and more large private sector organisations because they appreciate the benefits of applying a proven framework to their projects. In my humble opinion, PRINCE2 represents the most up to date best practices in project management and in fact, the most recent edition of the PRINCE2 manual, which was only released 2 months ago describes these best practices.
PRINCE2 is different from the PMI’s PMBOK in the sense that PRINCE2 focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the level of management above the project manager and one of its core principles is that any project must have continued business justification. This therefore drives the decisions on a project. In my opinion, PMBOK concentrates on the aspects of management performed by the project manager, whereas PRINCE2 puts this work in the context of the control required by senior management. PRINCE2 does not describe in detail how to schedule work, or perform critical path analysis because these aspects of project management are covered by other methods. In essence then, PRINCE2 is a framework with which an organisation may exercise better control over it’s projects.

Regarding courses and exams. A 5 day course including exams is standard in the UK. That entails preparation work of 4-5 hours, plus homework of another 2 hours per night. The course is intensive, but the fact is that people wouldn’t be prepared to pay for a course longer than 5 days, even though in an ideal world, it would be longer than a week.

I’d start here
http://www.prince2.com/what-is-prince2.asp

Prince2 and OGC are the pm-culutre of the UK government. The “government” means nearly everything from MOD (their DoD) down to the local council (city). Focused mostly on IT, OGC and Prince2 provide a framework for managing projects that is beyond that of PMBOK. Step-by-step processes are defined, assessment of maturity of the organization and other “guidance” is available.

For example PMI has OPM3 which is a consultants dream come true. with many 100’s of processes. OGC’s Project, Program, and Portfolio Management Maturity Model (P3M3) is a clean straight forward assessment process – and “call a priest it’s a miracle” it’s free.

One major problem with PMBOK is it a mashup of a lot of different ideas. Some are well formed, some are poorly formed. The risk management area for example is poorly formed when compared to OGC’s risk management process, which is highly influenced by MOD and a UK tool – Active Risk Manager – which is the defacto standard at NASA and many defense firms (along with the ARES risk tools).

So one reason to look at Prince2 – and there are materials on the web, books in the store, and sales people to return your calls – is it is a “well formed” approach to managing projects with a framework AND a set of work processes to go with it.

That said it is not an assessment of how good you are as a project manager. There is likley nothing that can do that except a resume of successful projects. It is not a foll proof way to getting to “done.” There are many examples of failed projects using Prince2, just like there are many examples of failed programs using the absolute best practices of DoD. I can see one of those from my house here in Boulder. SIBRS is the poster child of failure – until recently.
http://www.fas.org/spp/military/program/sp97/sbirs.html

But Prince2 is worth a look. The core problem I see on our commerical practice – which is why I stay on the defense side of the house – is the commerical guys are simply not motivated to improve their processes unless threatened in some way. “Your fired,” is one way that seems to work.

But don’t let people tell you it’s not of any use. Our UK colleagues in IT and MOD use it all the time to great advantage. As well EV is much more mature in the civil and commerical side in the UK than it is here. SOX compliance was a complete bust in terms of IT project performance managemment. The UK had equally busted projects – national health service – but they actually tool action to “stop doing stupid things on purpose,” as we used to say at Rocky Flats.

Any opinions out there on this are appreciated!