PRINCE2 7 Practitioner exam – reducing the cognitive load

15 Jan 2024 11:04 AM

Blog posted by: Michelle Rowland – lead examiner, PRINCE2 7 at PeopleCert, 11 January 2024.

Taking exams can be a very stressful experience and for many people sitting the PRINCE2 exams it might be their first exam experience for many years.

So, even if you are confident with and accustomed to taking exams, I am sure you would be grateful for all the help you can get!

PeopleCert recognizes how people can feel when taking exams and has focused particularly on how to make it easier to take the exam by reducing the “cognitive load”. This means minimizing the amount of new information a person needs to process to answer the questions.

This has been achieved in the new PRINCE2 7 in two ways:

• By making it easier to study the PRINCE2 manual and use it actively when applying the method and, in particular, during the exam.
• Simplifying the exam format.

A simplified PRINCE2 7 manual structure

The practices covered in the PRINCE2 7 manual in chapters 5-11 have been improved in several ways:

• Including a technique in each practice to enable you to immediately apply PRINCE2.
• Incorporating the management products (for example the purpose and content of a business case or risk register), important to the application of each practice, at the end of each practice to avoid the need to find each management product in appendix A. This way you don’t need to switch between parts of the manual, making it easier to use the manual to answer questions.
• Clearly explaining how to apply each practice (section X.4 of each practice) in a variety of situations to help make the guidance more applicable to your work.

Meanwhile, the processes covered in the PRINCE2 manual in chapters 13-19 have been simplified by:

• Including an input/activities/output table early in each chapter so you have a complete overview of each process.
• Providing a single table of responsibilities (RACI chart) for the process as a whole.
• Including a table demonstrating how the practices apply to the process.

And, applicable to both processes and practices, the structure of each is consistent, making navigation simpler. In addition four, simple scenarios/case studies are embedded throughout the manual to demonstrate practical application of the method and aid understanding.

PRINCE2 7 – a revised exam structure

The latest exam for PRINCE2 7 has been structured in the order of the manual:

• Principles (chapter 2)
• People (chapter 3)
• Practices (chapters 5 – 11)
• Processes (chapters 13 – 19)

This makes it easier for candidates to find the necessary information without having to remember where in the manual to look when answering questions.

By doing this the exam takes you through the manual chapter by chapter, allowing a greater focus on understanding the question and applying knowledge rather than worrying about where to find the content.

In addition, the “NowBYou” scenario from the PRINCE2 7 manual is used in the sample practitioner papers. This enables candidates to consider practical application of PRINCE2 during their learning.

Also, the live exam papers are based on one of the other three, simple scenarios included in the manual. This means candidates can read the scenarios and even discuss how to apply their learning to them as part of their studies, so familiarizing themselves with the scenarios before sitting the exam.

Therefore, opening the paper on exam day will be a far less stressful experience.

Close collaboration between the PRINCE2 7 examination and authoring teams has led to both guidance and an exam that delivers the right level of detailed content without overloading the learner in the process.

In the end, project professionals and the organizations they work for need access to the latest concepts and competencies. PRINCE2 7 is designed to help them get there.