Anyone study the Agile or Princes2 project management qualification?

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I am interested in the Agile and Princes 2 qualification.

Does anyone have any recommendations in who to study with to do theses courses?

Any tips on how to pass?

How long did it take?

Are they expensive?

Are you working in project management already?

No

I did PRINCE2 some years back. It was full-time over a week. Very full on and 2 exams, the foundation midway through and the final exam at the end of the week, but only for those who passed the foundation exam. Lots of homework too. I seem to recall it costing around £1500. There's a few less expensive agile courses about. Could your employer put you through it?

These courses are expensive if self funded, but if you want a junior role and have PRINCE2 on your CV, you could buy the PRINCE2 book on eBay, self study and just pay for the foundation exam which was around £300-500 a few years ago when I looked into it. There are a couple of free practice papers online too.
You can then do the practitioner test later when you have more project experience (ideally get your employer to pay for it).
The AXELOS website should have a list of accredited trainers.

Thank you everyone. That is really helpful.

I doubt my employer would pay, they only let you do things related to the role you are already in - which I am trying to get away from. Thus, the self study is interesting.

I did it online with QA. I think it was just over £1000 but my employer paid half. I spent a week doing the studying with the online videos and reading and then I booked the exams for a couple of weeks later so I had time to go over any content I wasn’t sure of and do some practice papers.
I was fairly new to project management but had read a couple of books beforehand and looked into the PM structures and resources of my employer so I had a basic understanding.

Really interested in this as have worked in and out of project management and did a lot of theory on my mba (years ago), it’s astonishing how many people are looking for prince 2 now for jobs. Or as pp said, to be partially qualified (so the foundation stage sounds good)

@notmaryberry What is QA?

Also, if you do the course and you are not in the role yet and have no actual experience apart from the course, would this be an issue with companies? I really don't want to waste my time without a clear path.

How transferable are your current skills? Are there aspects of your job now that involve managing serval this, organising cross functional teams, budgets, process change?

It may be that by highlighting those things and a qualification you can find a junior PM role to start with. If you 'get it' progress can be quite quick

Having a background in the projects you are managing is fairly essential.

@quietlycontent I don't manage budgets no. The other skills I can do.

@creamyterror How do you get started in the first place?

I'm starting to think careers are predominantly about luck and being in the right place at the right time and sucking up to the right people. Infact, I was told it was that way in my company and I have seen many other instances of it.

The unprofessional imbeciles (who barely have a GCSE between them) and are promoted and can't even answer simple questions to trainees, is truly shocking.

Usually employers want someone with experience, in my experience people typically get into project management through picking up tasks from a PM while working on a project full time, then covering while PM away and gradually getting more challenging tasks to do while still doing their day job then if good they will get offered internal hybrid roles, e.g hybrid software engineer/PM or hybrid BA / PM.

We’d support an internal colleague that wanted to move to PM, but we wouldn’t hire someone with qualifications and no experience.

Many of the best PMs I have worked with had no formal PM qualifications.

Absolutely there is luck involved in every career. Why are you not doing the sucking up, getting to know the people who make the decisions?
Part of being a successful PM is your ability to build relationships, to charm, to persuade people to do things when you have little power over them - you need to be resilient, organised, energetic, diplomatic, a problem solver, a fantastic communicator and then you need to under the nature of the project you are going to manage, a qualification is not going to be enough - you need to roll up your sleeves and learn the job first - then if you have the personal attributes, showing your ability to manage small jobs, you may be supported to move onto something bigger.