Latest on MoP exams

Last Friday, along with 15 of my Maven colleagues, I sat the new Management of Portfolio (MoP) qualification. OGC are about a month away from launching their latest best practice management guide for identifying, prioritising and planning all the projects and programmes needed to achieve the organisations strategic objectives.

The guide will form the basis of a course and there will be a chance to sit a Foundation qualification and later in the year a Practitioner qualification. It is aimed at all those involved in the selection and delivery of business change initiatives including: members of management boards and Directors of Change; Senior Responsible Owners (SROs); portfolio, programme, project, business change and benefits managers.

Taking the exam reminded me how important it is that as trainers we repeat the instructions, help people stay calm and provide as much exam technique as possible to help people cope under these stressful situations.

I cannot believe how many mistakes I made on my application form, because although I thought I was really concentrating, a large part of my brain had gone into ‘panic mode’. The mistake that made my colleagues laugh the loudest was that I couldn’t even get my name right – I wrote my husbands name instead of mine!

Taking the exam itself was stressful as I never feel I can give as much time to each question as I want to, because I am worrying that I have not got enough time. I should have worked out how many minutes I had for each question and stuck to it which would have helped.

One thing that I do at the start of every exam that I do is to write a quick list on the question paper of the processes, or definitions or roles and responsibilities that I think I might need before I start answering questions. This reassures me that I do know what I am talking about and gives me something to check my answers against, particularly if I am starting to doubt the answer or it’s a sequence type answer where I need to get the information in the right order.

We won’t get our results until later this week, so wish me luck, and I hope it gives you some comfort to know that your trainer has suffered just as much exam stress as you are going through!