Talk to me about Prince2
Discussion
Following conversations with my employers I was after some words of wisdom from the annals of PH
I currently work in a sales support role but have decided that I don't want to take the step into sales, as I'm knocking on a bit (47) and don't want the stress that such a risk & reward environment brings
I've been with the company 15 months, although I have worked for the CCO in a previous life, and he has suggested that Project Management would be a good fit for me with regards to a career progression. We're talking about the company paying for Prince2 Foundation and Practitioner, and a role is coming available for a Project Co-ordinator, to take on lower end projects (up to approx. 10 days) in an MSP/Cloud Provider environment
No discussion on salary as yet but to be honest I would happily move for the same money as I am on now if the earning potential with experience is good. Speaking to guys in the PM team that would seem to be a realistic 30% uplift in the co-ordination role and then another 20% on top of that with a move to project manager in the future - so in all around a 50% uplift on my current basic.
What would the expected salary bands for a competent PM with 3 years experience be for an example? And what other avenues would you envisage as a progression from there? (something like change management for example)
I've sat a couple of test papers for Prince2 foundation today, just out of interest, and achieved 49% and 53% just by applying common sense
I currently work in a sales support role but have decided that I don't want to take the step into sales, as I'm knocking on a bit (47) and don't want the stress that such a risk & reward environment brings
I've been with the company 15 months, although I have worked for the CCO in a previous life, and he has suggested that Project Management would be a good fit for me with regards to a career progression. We're talking about the company paying for Prince2 Foundation and Practitioner, and a role is coming available for a Project Co-ordinator, to take on lower end projects (up to approx. 10 days) in an MSP/Cloud Provider environment
No discussion on salary as yet but to be honest I would happily move for the same money as I am on now if the earning potential with experience is good. Speaking to guys in the PM team that would seem to be a realistic 30% uplift in the co-ordination role and then another 20% on top of that with a move to project manager in the future - so in all around a 50% uplift on my current basic.
What would the expected salary bands for a competent PM with 3 years experience be for an example? And what other avenues would you envisage as a progression from there? (something like change management for example)
I've sat a couple of test papers for Prince2 foundation today, just out of interest, and achieved 49% and 53% just by applying common sense
Is that uplift on your basic, or basic plus commission? I would have expected an averagely successful salesman to significantly outearn a PCO role.
That said, PM seems like a bit of a doddle, until the wheels come off. You're not being paid to make sure everyone is doing their jobs, you're being paid to unf
k things when the customer fks than up.
If work want to pay you to qualify, smashing. Prince is mostly common sense, and there are solid logical reasons for the other 20%, which makes sense if the PM is the most important person on the team, which is not necessarily the case, but they do tend to be the face of the project, for obvious reasons.
That said, PM seems like a bit of a doddle, until the wheels come off. You're not being paid to make sure everyone is doing their jobs, you're being paid to unf
k things when the customer fks than up.If work want to pay you to qualify, smashing. Prince is mostly common sense, and there are solid logical reasons for the other 20%, which makes sense if the PM is the most important person on the team, which is not necessarily the case, but they do tend to be the face of the project, for obvious reasons.
randlemarcus said:
Is that uplift on your basic, or basic plus commission? I would have expected an averagely successful salesman to significantly outearn a PCO role.
That said, PM seems like a bit of a doddle, until the wheels come off. You're not being paid to make sure everyone is doing their jobs, you're being paid to unfk things when the customer fks than up.
If work want to pay you to qualify, smashing. Prince is mostly common sense, and there are solid logical reasons for the other 20%, which makes sense if the PM is the most important person on the team, which is not necessarily the case, but they do tend to be the face of the project, for obvious reasons.
I am not on commission in my current role - I get a quarterly bonus based upon meeting KPIs. The co-ordinator role is a £5-8k uplift on my current OTE with the PM role being another £5k on top of that (based on a conversation with the last person to do the same job and promotion, although I appreciate that she was already a qualified PM when she joined but without the commercial awareness that I bring). I'm aware that I could earn more in an Account Management role but I just don't have the hunger for it and fancy a change in direction.That said, PM seems like a bit of a doddle, until the wheels come off. You're not being paid to make sure everyone is doing their jobs, you're being paid to unf
k things when the customer fks than up.If work want to pay you to qualify, smashing. Prince is mostly common sense, and there are solid logical reasons for the other 20%, which makes sense if the PM is the most important person on the team, which is not necessarily the case, but they do tend to be the face of the project, for obvious reasons.
The company viewpoint is that I have a lot of transferrable skills from my current role, as well as relationships with the sales team, accounts, support and the project engineers. My Gallup main strengths are very strongly skewed towards relationship building and communication, with attention to detail featuring quite highly as well - which are felt to be good values to take into the role
To be fair, this was instigated by my CCO, he rung up for a chat and asked me what I wanted and he suggested this route to me when I said I didn't want to join the sales team. Company culture is brilliant and I'm very happy there so have no qualms about moving within the business and appreciate them looking to invest in my career and helping me to progress (although appreciate that there are vested interests as my training costs are probably a lot less that recruiting costs would be)
About 10 years ago I did PRINCE2 at evening classes because I was desperate to get out of my job and knew that P2 would look good on my CV.
I’ve never “managed” a project before or since and I passed it to practitioner level which should tell you something.
It’s fairly straightforward. It gives you an idea of planning and putting a structure in place and having gateway reviews.
On the other hand, IIRC, the answer to every problem you could encounter is go to the project sponsor for more resource.
I have a friend who was a real project manager and he did it but didn’t get on with it. He thought PMII was much more realistic.
Basically, if it helps you get a better job then do it. You probably won’t regret it but you probably won’t use much of it either. You’ll hear lots of projects being run on the PINO principle which means PRINCE In Name Only.
I’ve never “managed” a project before or since and I passed it to practitioner level which should tell you something.
It’s fairly straightforward. It gives you an idea of planning and putting a structure in place and having gateway reviews.
On the other hand, IIRC, the answer to every problem you could encounter is go to the project sponsor for more resource.
I have a friend who was a real project manager and he did it but didn’t get on with it. He thought PMII was much more realistic.
Basically, if it helps you get a better job then do it. You probably won’t regret it but you probably won’t use much of it either. You’ll hear lots of projects being run on the PINO principle which means PRINCE In Name Only.
I am currently in a Project Co-ordinator role and I was sent years back as a guinea pig for the company to undertake Prince2.
Found it dull, had to do lots of reading, learnt how to pass the course, passed, never utilised any of it ever again.
It looks good on a CV and is easy to pass with a lot of reading, so if someone else is funding it go for it but I wouldn’t expect to actually use any of it
Found it dull, had to do lots of reading, learnt how to pass the course, passed, never utilised any of it ever again.
It looks good on a CV and is easy to pass with a lot of reading, so if someone else is funding it go for it but I wouldn’t expect to actually use any of it
Fusss said:
I am currently in a Project Co-ordinator role and I was sent years back as a guinea pig for the company to undertake Prince2.
Found it dull, had to do lots of reading, learnt how to pass the course, passed, never utilised any of it ever again.
It looks good on a CV and is easy to pass with a lot of reading, so if someone else is funding it go for it but I wouldn’t expect to actually use any of it
The boss of the Customer Success team has said that they use the principles of it but then we have different processes on topFound it dull, had to do lots of reading, learnt how to pass the course, passed, never utilised any of it ever again.
It looks good on a CV and is easy to pass with a lot of reading, so if someone else is funding it go for it but I wouldn’t expect to actually use any of it
It all looks like full steam ahead - HR are actively looking for my replacement in my current role and just getting authorisation for spend on the training and then we can look at dates to move over. I'm starting to actively shadow calls as of next week to get the hang of the projects side of things
I've been in sales/sales support for about 15 years so am actually really excited about the change of direction
On the Friday of my week foundation and practitioner course, the morning was for revision, before the exam at midday.
I left, dumped the book in the bid.
I took the exam as my train was booked and for some reason passed the bloody thing and never used it.
That was 11 years ago, are they still bleating on about PIDs and RAGs???
I left, dumped the book in the bid.
I took the exam as my train was booked and for some reason passed the bloody thing and never used it.
That was 11 years ago, are they still bleating on about PIDs and RAGs???
PRojects IN Controlled Environments 2, is a very old civil service model. I’m always surprised when people add it to a CV, when demonstratable experience of project management is far more necessary.
As a doctrin, It’s fine to give you the fundamentals about RIsk and other logs and being an open book exam, it doesn’t take a lot to pass, if you know where in the book (or the posters on the walls of the exam room, to look).
But, in the real world, people just follow what works best, based on their own or their programme managers experience.
As a doctrin, It’s fine to give you the fundamentals about RIsk and other logs and being an open book exam, it doesn’t take a lot to pass, if you know where in the book (or the posters on the walls of the exam room, to look).
But, in the real world, people just follow what works best, based on their own or their programme managers experience.
Get the app, it's got mock tests that ask the same questions as the actual "exam". Passed my foundation years ago, did a mock practitioner exam too and passed that, never really felt the urge to stump up the money to do the actual exam as it's all in the book anyway!
edit: this is the app
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/qa-prince2-accelerat...
edit: this is the app
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/qa-prince2-accelerat...
Edited by Nico Adie on Wednesday 9th February 10:20
Gassing Station | Jobs & Employment Matters | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff