Open-book strategy: preparing and navigating the manual

An open-book exam sounds like a gift: the answers are in the book. In practice, the manual helps only candidates who already know roughly where to look and what they are checking. A candidate who opens the manual for every question will run out of time; a candidate who never opens it will lose marks on details such as which role is responsible for an activity or what a management product contains. This lesson shows how to prepare the book before the exam, how to decide when to use it during the exam, and how to find things quickly. It applies to Practitioner only; Foundation is closed book.

What the manual is, and what it is not

The official PRINCE2 7 guidance is organized around the five integrated elements: the principles, the people element, the seven practices, the seven processes and tailoring to the project context, followed by appendices that describe the management products and a glossary. Each practice chapter explains the purpose of the practice, the guidance for applying it, the management products involved and how responsibilities are shared. Each process chapter explains the purpose and objectives of the process, its context and its activities, with the responsibilities for each.

The manual is not an index of exam answers. It describes the method in prose, and exam questions are written to test judgement in a scenario. The manual can confirm that the project board authorizes the project closure, or that the quality register records planned and actual quality activities. It cannot tell you whether an action described in a scenario is the most appropriate one; that decision is yours. Keep that distinction in mind and you will use the book for what it does well.

Preparing the book before the exam

Study guides report that printed books may be annotated and tabbed, but that loose sheets and sticky notes are not allowed; check the current rules before you start, because they can change and differ between delivery methods. Within the rules, preparation pays for itself many times over. Ana spent two evenings preparing her copy.

Tabs come first. Ana tabbed the start of each principle summary, the people element, each of the seven practices, each of the seven processes, the tailoring chapter, the management products appendix and the glossary. She used one colour for practices, one for processes and one for reference sections, so that she could open the right part of the book by colour before reading a label.

Annotations come second. In the margins of the process chapters, she wrote the trigger and the main outputs of each process on its first page, so that she could see at a glance where the process starts and what it produces. Beside each practice chapter she noted the management products the practice uses. On the first page of the products appendix she wrote a short list of products by type: baselines, records and reports. Annotations should be brief pointers, not essays; long notes slow you down.

When to open the book

The most important open-book skill is deciding not to open it. Ana's rule was simple: answer from knowledge first. Open the book only when two options remain and the difference between them is a checkable fact, such as which role is responsible, what a product contains, or whether an activity belongs to one process or another. If the difference is a matter of judgement about the scenario, the book will not help; reread the scenario instead.

A second rule is to set a time limit. If a lookup has not found the answer in about ninety seconds, choose the better option, flag the question and move on. You can return at the end if time allows. Long searches are where open-book candidates lose the most time and gain the least.

A third rule is to use the book to check, not to search. Before opening it, decide exactly what you are looking for: 'Is the work package authorized in controlling a stage or in managing product delivery?' A precise question points you to a precise page. 'What does the manual say about work packages?' points you to thirty pages.

Finding things fast

Speed comes from knowing the structure. If you know that each process chapter lists its activities with responsibilities, you can go straight to the activity. If you know that the products appendix describes each product's purpose and composition, you can confirm what a product contains in seconds. Practising with the actual book during mock exams is essential: the first time you navigate it should not be the exam.

Ana timed herself on twenty lookup drills, such as 'Who produces the end stage report?' and 'Which product records the agreed format of highlight reports?' Her average lookup fell from about two and a half minutes on the first drills to under a minute after a week, mostly because she stopped reading around the answer.

drills = [150, 140, 125, 120, 110, 100, 95, 90, 85, 80, 75, 72, 70, 66, 64, 60, 58, 57, 55, 54]  # seconds, invented
avg_first5 = sum(drills[:5]) / 5
avg_last5 = sum(drills[-5:]) / 5
print(f"first five drills: {avg_first5:.0f} s average; last five: {avg_last5:.0f} s average")
lookups_in_exam = 12
for label, secs in (("untrained", avg_first5), ("trained", avg_last5)):
    minutes = lookups_in_exam * secs / 60
    print(f"{label:<9} {lookups_in_exam} lookups take about {minutes:.0f} minutes of 150")
saved = lookups_in_exam * (avg_first5 - avg_last5) / 60
per_mark = (150 - 25) / 70
print(f"time saved: {saved:.0f} minutes, worth about {saved / per_mark:.0f} marks of working time")

first five drills: 129 s average; last five: 57 s average
untrained 12 lookups take about 26 minutes of 150
trained   12 lookups take about 11 minutes of 150
time saved: 14 minutes, worth about 8 marks of working time

Twelve lookups cost Ana about 26 minutes before training and about 11 after, saving roughly 14 minutes. At about 1.8 minutes per mark, that is working time for eight more marks, more than the gap between a borderline fail and a comfortable pass.

The electronic guidance

Online exams may provide the official guidance electronically within the exam interface, and study guides say an approved electronic edition may be used on a second device in some arrangements. Electronic search is fast for exact terms but can be slow for concepts, because a search for 'tolerance' returns dozens of hits. If you will use the electronic version, practise searching for precise terms such as product names and activity names, and learn the structure so that you can jump to chapters rather than relying on search alone.

Ana sat Practitioner online from home, so she tested the exam software's guidance viewer in the practice session offered by the examination institute and kept her printed, tabbed copy beside her after confirming that the rules for her booking allowed it.

A lookup drill set

The drill questions below are typical of the facts candidates need to confirm during Practitioner. Time yourself on each one with your own book: open it, find the answer and close it. Repeat the set on three different days, and record the times. The aim is not to memorize the answers, although you will, but to learn the structure of the book well enough that any similar lookup takes less than a minute.

Drills also reveal where your book needs better tabs or notes. If a particular lookup is slow every time, add a margin pointer at the place you first looked, telling yourself where the answer actually is, provided annotations are allowed. After a week, the book will be organized around the way you think, which is exactly what an open-book exam rewards.

One final caution: candidates who prepare their book very thoroughly sometimes begin to trust it more than their own knowledge, and open it reflexively. Keep the 'knowledge first' rule even when the book is beautifully tabbed. Its job is to settle the occasional factual doubt, not to replace the understanding you have built over the whole programme.

Practitioner candidates who sit the exam online should also rehearse with the electronic guidance if it will be available in the exam interface. Search for the same drill items electronically and compare the times with the printed book. Many candidates find a combination works best: the printed book for browsing a familiar chapter, and electronic search for an exact product or activity name.