About MSP®

Foundation level
The purpose of the Foundation level is to confirm you have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the MSP® guidance to interact effectively with those involved in the management of a programme or act as an informed member of a programme office team, business change team or project delivery team working within an environment supporting MSP®. The Foundation qualification is also a pre-requisite for the practitioner certification.
The exam has the following format:
multiple choice
75 questions per paper with 1 mark available per question
5 questions to be trial and not counted in scores
35 marks required to pass (out of 70 available) – 50%
60 minutes duration
closed book
Practitioner level
The purpose of the Practitioner level is to confirm you have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the MSP® guidance to act as an informed member of a programme management team. This level is also required for programme management professionals progressing toward the advanced practitioner certification, and those aspiring to become programme management professionals in the future.
The practitioner course follows on from the Foundation course, where the method, its philosophy and its terminology are introduced. It focuses on the more intricate aspects of the method. Based on a case study, the method is put into practice through a series of challenging questions that mirror the questions of the exam.
The course consists of a series of lectures and seminars. This time the emphasis is on the seminars where the method is put into practice with the help of case studies. The lectures are designed to remind you how the method operates while the seminars take on the principles and apply them to the case study. The comprehensive course handbook, containing all the course’s slides, is used along with the case study, which most students would have met prior to this course. By assuming familiarisation with the method, the course can proceed at a pace that helps the visualisation of the method’s concepts. Each seminar ends with sample multiple choice questions that prepare us for the certificate examination.
The exam has the following format:
objective testing
8 questions per paper, each carrying 10 marks
40 marks required to pass (out of 80 available) – 50%
two-and-a-half hours duration
open-book (only the MSP® guide is allowed)
The content of the course follows the contents of the method’s manual, which is sent out to all delegates prior to the course start. Delegates are required to read the manual before they attend their first teaching session.