Day 2 - Near Caffeine Heart Attack

Seriously, I was in danger of caffeine overload today. If I'd had any more tea I think I'd have just keeled over.

Tea, Pepsi Max, Irn Bru and Aero are what kept me awake, I hit a wall at about 3:30pm, (with 54.5 hours to go), I had no choice!! I had the worst nights sleep last night, and I hope that my excessive caffeine consumption won't cause the same tonight. I stopped drinking tea at about 6:30pm so fingers crossed.

I also suspect I'm coming down with a throat infection. So that's nice.

10 hours of Project Management today, processes and themes and principles. It all blurs into one after a while, and I'm just grateful that everyone else in the room has the same moans and groans as I do when we're finally released back into the world:

'Why does he have to go so fast?'

'Did you get that bit about 'tailoring' the project?'

'Yeah I got question 8 wrong too.....bastards!!'

And some of them have MUCH more experience of project management than I do.

(We had a mock exam today, and we've only learned a third of the material. Pass mark is 38/75 and I got 40. Everyone else got much higher I think...but I'm pretty happy with that!!)

Norm brought up a valid point in his comment, which I copied below for you, save you searching around:

"Sounds like fun. I'm a bit of a sceptic about things like this. I've not yet come across a course of this nature that I thought I learned anything from. The theory's always fine - it's when you get into the real world that you run into trouble. You know, Yvonne has to leave at four pm on Thursdays for choir practice. Steve and Alex don't like each other and won't co-operate. Kev is utterly useless but cannot be fired. Stuff like that tends to gum up the works and somehow these fantastic theories never take these little difficulties into account."

I think that this will/would be an incredibly useful tool for me when I go back to work IF I get the opportunity to apply it properly and often enough. However, I expect you're correct.

I doubt that if I were asked to run a project, that I would be given any resources. A Project Manager acting alone does not a Project make. I'd at least need a Project Board, but the problem is that they would need to know what their reponsibilities are under the Prince2 framework. As you say, you also need a team who are going to work well together.

What I'm going to gain from this course is essentially a way to organise such projects as I am given. In my current position I'm never going to be given a huge project, the chances may be that I'm the only person working on the project. Hence, Prince2 will give me the ability to be able to monitor my own progress and make sure I'm not rushing off in a random direction and being distracted from the project goals, so that I can deliver the 'product' withing budget and on time...etc etc etc.

I can only hope that I'm given the opportunity often enough to practice this so that when the day comes when I am give a larger project to run...I can still do it!

On a lighter note....the food was better today, garlic chicken and boiled potatoes. Yesterday was a leathery turkey steak that we all had trouble trying to swallow. The consensus seems to be that the veggie option is far prefereable. We'll all have turned veggie by the end of the week.

Tune in tomorrow for Day 3