Introduction
Elizabeth took a course so that she could gain a solid understanding of the PRINCE2 methodology and improve her skills as a project manager.
As a project manager, she found the course valuable for her career. By attending the course, she gained greater knowledge and confidence to work on projects. During the Practitioner course, Elizabeth appreciated how the trainer used real-life scenarios to help her learn and understand the concepts.
Overall, Elizabeth found the PRINCE2 course and certification beneficial for her professional development.
Watch the short video below, or download the podcast to listen on your device.
About PRINCE2
PRINCE2, which stands for Projects IN Controlled Environments. It is a comprehensive project management methodology that covers principles, people, practices, and processes. These elements help to answer important questions about decision-making, including who should be responsible and accountable, which processes should be used, and when decisions should be made during the project life cycle.
PRINCE2 is the world’s most popular project management certification and can be applied to any project, regardless of size or industry.
There are several benefits to obtaining PRINCE2 including:
- Gaining new skills and knowledge that increase your confidence in managing projects
- Being able to communicate and collaborate with stakeholders using a common terminology
- Improving your ability to manage projects effectively
- Learning a practical method that outlines the steps to take, the order in which to take them, and who is responsible for each step.
PRINCE2 certification
PRINCE2 certification has two levels: Foundation and Practitioner. The PRINCE2 Foundation level is suitable for individuals who support project managers or have duties related to project management but are not responsible for the project’s outcome.
The PRINCE2 Practitioner level is the highest PRINCE2 certification. It is ideal for professionals who manage projects, such as change managers, project support staff, product managers, or business analysts.
Knowledge Train offers PRINCE2 training in both virtual classrooms and self-paced online formats.
If you enrol in an instructor-led PRINCE2 course, you will receive top-quality training from a team of experienced PRINCE2 trainers and project managers.
If you enrol in a self-paced PRINCE2 online course, you will find an interactive learning experience that includes exercises that promote a deeper understanding of the material. To ensure that its online courses are effective, Knowledge Train applies best practices in instructional design, such as micro-learning, gamification, quizzes, selective use of audio, and a modern learning management system.
These strategies help to keep the learning process enjoyable and prevent students from feeling overwhelmed by too much information.
PRINCE2 courses
- PRINCE2 classroom courses
- PRINCE2 online courses
- PRINCE2 Foundation courses
- PRINCE2 Practitioner courses
Our training program provides you with the best opportunity to pass the PRINCE2 Foundation exam, as demonstrated by our high pass rate of 99% (compared to the UK national average of 97%).
Our pass rate for the Practitioner exam is also impressive, with 83% of participants passing (compared to the UK national average of 73%).
Transcript
Here’s the full transcript of the video.
00:00:08 Sevcan Yasa: Hi, thank you so much for joining. Can we start by taking your name and the company you work for please?
00:00:14 Elizabeth Moon: Yeah, so my name is Elizabeth Moon and I work for a company called Looper Insights.
00:00:20 Sevcan Yasa: Can you tell me a bit about the industry that you work in, please?
00:00:24 Elizabeth Moon: Yeah, so we work in analytics within the film and TV industry.
What are your responsibilities at work?
00:00:34 Elizabeth Moon: I would be getting in contact with a lot of third suppliers. Third party suppliers to get their side of the business to make sure that it’s up and running and progressing as we need it to.
00:00:47 Elizabeth Moon: I will be working with a lot of different teams to see where we are with different projects and at the moment, we have projects to deal with some tech migration, for example our security systems and other policies like that, that we are either transferring or updating things like that and looking at road maps to make sure that we are on point, adapting them or updating them in any way.
00:01:14 Elizabeth Moon: And we’re very much in the agile framework, so joining Sprint demos, standups and helping anyone who has a blocker that I could help a lot of things on might typically fall through the cracks without a clear owner I take ownership of them until I can then pass them off to the most suitable person after that.
Why did you take the PRINCE2 course?
00:01:41 Sevcan Yasa: Why did you decide to take a PRINCE2 course?
00:01:45 Elizabeth Moon: So previous to joining Looper I was actually a Product Owner and I had done a course to become a Certified Product Owner and I just kind of really expanded my knowledge of my role and mainly my confidence I would say. What I then, what happened to me then was Looper offered me a job as a Project Manager because they thought I had the right skills to do that role well.
00:02:12 Elizabeth Moon: And I just knew from the beginning I would be happy to do that and I’m happy to take that opportunity to have a new role, but I knew I would want, of course to just once again, to have that foundational understanding, knowledge, and confidence in it.
00:02:26 Elizabeth Moon: So, I reached out to a former, my former project manager. She recommended not only the PRINCE2 course, but she recommended Knowledge Train and yeah, from then I just decided it would be the best way to move forward and to feel comfortable in a new position.
00:02:41 Sevcan Yasa: Apart from actually moving to become a project manager, how did gaining a PRINCE2 qualification help you in your career?
00:02:51 Elizabeth Moon: OK. I think one of the big things that I got from it is especially as a woman in a STEM company and a woman in tech in particular just learning that it is not only OK, but it is important that you have a level of assertiveness and authority and to take ownership of that. So, I think that was a big part. A big part that I took out of the out of the course was learning that.
00:03:24 Sevcan Yasa: And how do you feel about working in projects now after completing the PRINCE2 qualifications?
00:03:31 Elizabeth Moon: Completely different mindset. I’m working with them a completely different way of starting them, and I always found that starting something was the most difficult part. You can so easily get overwhelmed by how much there is to do, especially with project managing because you don’t have a clear view of what’s going to happen. That’s up to us to discover that. So that’s when it can be really overwhelming, and you can just feel like you can’t take the first step. So just knowing what your first few steps are at least and having that framework and realising that it’s something you’ll be able to repeat again and again and that has been really helpful. And just the structure and being able to follow that structure and take ownership of that structure as well.
00:04:14 Sevcan Yasa: When you first started your role as a project manager, did you fully feel confident, or did you still feel like in some certain aspects that you still had to improve yourself?
00:04:25 Elizabeth Moon: Uhm. No, there’s always still like you’re not one 100% ready ever I don’t think it’s one of the things with PRINCE2 it is to be adapted always. It is not something that is going to be the same for each person for each company for each project even. So always still, when I have a project starting I need to think. How I’m going to adopt it and what’s different this time? It’s always different. So, you’re never fully prepared for what’s coming your way, but you’re fully prepared to prepare for it if that helps.
What is your career goal?
00:05:05 Elizabeth Moon: Project management. I would love to stay in that, I might enter into more kind of the operation side of things like I can see myself in a few years’ time tuning into the specific side of project management that I would like to do. Well one of the things I love about project management is it can bring you to lots of different industries.
00:05:26 Elizabeth Moon: So, at the moment I mean the film and TV industry is so fascinating and it’s really interesting. Before this I worked in the rail industry and I equally loved that and I just loved the fact that you can still have such variety through your career while staying in the same role with the same values and the same knowledge.
How was the PRINCE2 course?
00:05:52 Elizabeth Moon: I think I was really lucky with the course that I happened to get on, there were only four of us, in fact only 4 participants in the classroom and we had a fantastic instructor, and I found the foundational one to be really valuable. Just going through each section, I had read up, obviously on PRINCE2 before I watched the YouTube videos and I got in a book and whatnot but having someone with knowledge and experience in it not just read something off the page, but bring in real life scenarios and tweak it to our own industries and ask us questions after each section and whatnot just to make sure that we did fully understand and not just understand, but that we could start to envision how we would use it. I just found that really, really useful, so those couple of days were amazing.
00:06:46 Elizabeth Moon: The practical was also useful to look at a real life scenario and imagine interpret what we would do if we were the project manager in that scenario. That was really useful as well, and also of course it really prepared us for the exams at the end.
Did Knowledge Train stand out?
00:07:10 Elizabeth Moon: I really enjoyed it and I’ve since recommended Knowledge Train to a couple of colleagues and a couple of friends and not only people who were already product managers, but people who would like to become project managers. Uhm, I think it’s useful there, and it’s a very, it’s a very unique course because it’s so many industries that it applies to on our course alone. We had someone from the NHS we had me with film and TV with someone else who was in like retail or wasn’t anything to do with like online or tech or anything, but it still counted and it still made sense in their area. So yeah, that’s why.
00:07:50 Sevcan Yasa: Did you have to research Knowledge Train as a company or PRINCE2 as a topic before taking the course?
00:07:57 Elizabeth Moon: Yeah, I guess I did a bit of both. I was recommended Knowledge Train by my former project manager. Uh, she been, uh, very happy with the course that she did, so I looked into a bit.
00:08:07 Elizabeth Moon: I looked on the website I looked at uh, reviews online. Of course Google reviews and possibly Trustpilot also. And you guys had a couple of. videos of people as they had they found the courses so I found them really useful. In terms of the course itself, definitely there are some fantastic resources online again on YouTube in fact. And I bought a couple of introduction books also just to have an understanding of what we’re going into.
00:08:36 Elizabeth Moon: And to make sure, I guess like a project manager would to prepare as much as they could before the unknown comes my way. But definitely I would recommend you do that to make sure it’s what you want.
