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Interview with Sasha Martin

In this video, Sasha Martin describes how expectations were surpassed when she took her PRINCE2 training course with Knowledge Train.
Interview with Sasha Martin

Introduction

Participate with Sasha as she shares her experience throughout the PRINCE2 Foundation and Practitioner course with Knowledge Train.

Sasha, an Engagement Planning and Development Manager, recognised the imperative to adapt processes. Guided by PRINCE2, a structured approach emerged to rejuvenate, review, and innovate services. PRINCE2 ensured role clarity, enabling effective delegation across stakeholders and project managers. This spared Sasha the burden of sole responsibility.

With 20+ years of workforce development passion, PRINCE2 propels her consulting aspirations. The course exceeded expectations, featuring engaging lessons, superb trainers, and interactive learning. The manual and guidance streamlined advancement. Sasha ardently endorses the PRINCE2 course and our company, a testament to its transformative impact on project management.

Seize the opportunity presented by this essential video, brimming with valuable insights for aspiring and project management professionals.

Watch the short video below or download the podcast to listen on your device.

About PRINCE2

PRINCE 2 is a highly regarded worldwide project management framework encompassing seven fundamental principles, themes, and processes. These essential components collectively provide a comprehensive roadmap for addressing crucial decision-making aspects within the project. This includes identifying accountable parties, selecting suitable processes, and pinpointing optimal decision junctures throughout the project’s lifecycle.

Gaining PRINCE2 certification brings forth an array of advantages, including:

  • Enhancing your CV/resume and elevating opportunities for employment
  • Amplifying project management abilities and fostering self-assurance
  • Enabling efficient communication and collaboration through a common language
  • Progressing project management proficiencies
  • Offering a pragmatic framework for methodical guidance and well-defined responsibilities.

PRINCE2 certification

Choose from two levels of PRINCE2 certification: Foundation and Practitioner.

The PRINCE2 Foundation level is the introductory certification, equipping individuals with essential knowledge and comprehension of the PRINCE2 project management framework.

The PRINCE2 Practitioner level represents the elevated certification aimed at professionals with hands-on proficiency in utilising the PRINCE2 project management methodology within real-world contexts.

Knowledge Train offers PRINCE2 training in flexible formats to suit your preferences.

Join our virtual classroom courses for interactive sessions with instructors and peers, or select self-paced online courses to foster a self-directed learning journey. Irrespective of your preferred mode, our PRINCE2 training empowers you with the expertise and capabilities essential for triumphing in your project management pursuits.

PRINCE2 courses

The training program provided by Knowledge Train presents students with an exceptional opportunity to excel in the PRINCE2 Foundation exam, demonstrated by an impressive pass rate of 99% (surpassing the UK national average of 97%).

Furthermore, the pass rate for the PRINCE2 Practitioner exam remains notably elevated, with 83% of participants achieving success (in contrast to the UK national average of 73%).

Transcript

Here’s the full transcript of the video.

00:00:10 Sevcan Yasa: Hello, thank you so much for joining us today. Can we first start by taking your name, your job role on the company you work for please?

00:00:17 Sasha Martin: OK. Hello. My name is Sasha Martin and I work for Redbridge Council. I am an Engagement Planning and Development Manager within their people directorate service.

00:00:30 Sevcan Yasa: Can you tell us a bit about your responsibilities please?

00:00:33 Sasha Martin: Yes. So, I essentially work across what we call an Integrated Service. So, I support health and social care that includes NHS, adult social care, children services, education, and inclusion and some of our crossovers into public health services as well. And essentially my role is to support the workforce and Engagement Development across the directorate and across services, ensuring that they are meeting their needs when delivering to local communities and that we are supporting that in the back end through initiatives such as training, professional development, coaching, mentoring, ensuring that the right resources and systems are in place.

00:01:33 Sasha Martin: Ah, PRINCE2. I mean, the often the assumption is that a person that will take PRINCE2 is someone that’s doing a project management role, whereas in actual fact I found it really useful in my capacity as a manager especially coming out of the pandemic, there were a number of changes to our processes. There are a number of changes to the way we deliver our initiatives and there was a desperate need for us to look at how we start to restore, review, and change the delivery, how we work and how we provide services, and we needed a structure around that. So, we have an in-house project management team that support us with transformation, and it felt like a good idea at the time for us all to look into undertaking a project management course to be able to help us with starting to look at how we can start to make some of the changes we needed across the board.

00:02:40 Sasha Martin: I think the biggest thing because there was a group of eight of us that undertook it actually, which was wonderful because we’ve done it as a team, we’ve done it together, so we kind of bounced off one another and you know the examples that we were able to use within the training were very real because it was something we could all relate to, but it really helped the team to develop a structure and have a kind of recognised model to how we deliver our processes.

00:03:07 Sasha Martin: One of the biggest things is that when you are put in place as the lead on an initiative, there’s always an assumption that everything that comes out of that work is your responsibility and the beauty of PRINCE2 is that it pulls you into a space of you have to have a structure. Everybody has a role from the customer, the stakeholders right through to the director. The people supporting change, the project manager and it just gives everybody a specific role where they all have a responsibility, and it makes it so much easier to delegate rather than doing everything yourself.

00:03:56 Sasha Martin: My career goal, I love workforce development, it’s my passion. I’ve been working in workforce development for over 20 years. I’d love to get more into the consultancy side of it. And again, you know, being able to have a skill such as project management and have that qualification, I feel that that is something that will also help me in my future career progressions as well because it will support me in delivering some of the services that I would like to deliver through consultancy.

00:04:38 Sasha Martin: Like I said, it was a group of eight of us and you know, we’re all close colleagues and we found it very engaging. The trainers were fantastic, it was really good to have real, tangible examples to make it real, really real and look at how we could reflect and change things and how we can develop projects. It was a very engaging interactive course, the paperwork that came with the course of the manual and the user guide the learner book on the Foundation model module. They were fantastic, it was so thorough, you know, from the outside looking in, it looked like it was quite intense. For actually being in it and having a trainer that’s skilled to take you through each step. Provide you with an example, test what you’ve learned to consolidate that learning and then progress you onto the next level in itself is a project. It was very structured and very robust, and you felt like at each stage you were learning, but you also understanding and digesting that learning because you were tested with it as well. It was really, really good.

00:05:56 Sasha Martin: So, I was assigned with the task of researching where we could undertake a project management course. So, I spoke to colleagues in other boroughs. They gave me a few different names; I went online done a bit of research and looked at the reviews and decided that you maybe Knowledge Train. Sorry, maybe a good option to go with and we haven’t regretted it and we still roll out our courses for a number of members of our staff every year and we use Knowledge Train as well.

00:06:38 Sasha Martin: Absolutely. Like I said, we still use you, we probably roll out 8 to 14 delegates each year on your PRINCE2 courses. And so far, we’re happy, we’ve even had sessions where people want refreshers, and we’ve asked Knowledge Train to come in and deliver those refreshers, and they’ve been fantastic as well. We get feedback from all our courses and so far, it’s been positive, so absolutely would recommend Knowledge Train.

00:07:07 Sevcan Yasa: Thank you so much for joining us, Sasha.

00:07:10 Sasha Martin: That’s OK. Thank you.

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