General > General Technical Chat
Is formal Project Management training (PRINCE2) worth it?
ANTALIFE:
Hi All
I have the opportunity to get formal Project Management (PRINCE2) training via a 4 day online course with iCert Global LLC. To give some quick info about me:
* I am an EE that has been in the industry for ~5years (or ~10 if you don't count "professional" work)
* Most of my work has a 60/40 split between hardware/firmware design
* And finally I have been responsible for numerous "one man" projects, and am currently leading one that interfaces with other departments
With all that said, do yous think it's worth getting formal Project Management training? If so has anyone had any experiences with iCert?
UPDATE: Sorry for the late reply, week has been super hectic... Thanks for all the feedback! Have decided to give PRINCE2 a miss for now in favour of more technical courses/refreshers
tggzzz:
What would you lose if you attended?
My guess is that such qualifications' principal benefits are:
* when working in a Prince2 envioronment, you will share a common jargon with the other people
* when applying for a job, it might remove a "tick-box" obstacle to getting an interview
Whether those possible benefits outweight the loss is for you to decide.
Ian.M:
--- Quote from: Wikipedia ---PRINCE2 was developed as a UK government standard for information systems projects
--- End quote ---
:-DD :popcorn:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRINCE2
Unfortunately UK public sector IT projects are almost invariably over-budget with massive deadline slippage. Some sort of work eventually, but a fair proportion get sh!tcanned a couple of general elections later. Only a crooked politician could tell you that "UK government IT project management is effective" with a straight face!
Fred27:
I'm speaking from the point of view of professional software development. (My work is probably 85% software, 10% firmware, 5% hardware.) The software industry has completely moved away from waterfall approaches like PRINCE2 and largely embraced Agile methodologies. Agile may not be perfect (especially when not implemented properly) but it's 1000x better than waterfall.
Obviously, I get that EE is not quite the same as software. It's not quite as easy to take an iterative approach. However, I'd suggest finding out a bit more about Agile, Scrum, etc. before jumping into PRINCE2.
Tomorokoshi:
Waterfall is an example of how NOT to develop a project. However, if it has any redeeming features it does capture an iteration through a cycle. Therefore, expect to go through that basic Waterfall chart over and over.
Agile is a great method to update the font or background color on a few web pages. However, without a clear, understood, and maintained collection of design and performance goals that are reviewed at intervals on timescales several sprints long it can turn the development process into a random walk. This is difficult if the motions and rituals of sprints and scrums and standups and seances make it difficult to see the deck through the cards.
In both cases it's very tempting to make some quick estimates about project cost and time early, which by definition is done without complete information, and attempt to stick with the TIME schedule to the detriment of the PERFORMANCE schedule because Management.
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