I qualified as a Prince2 Practitioner just over a year ago and can't say I've put the whole system into practice, but the whole idea is that it is scalable - a highlight report can be as little as an update to the boss in the lift. The system was designed for very complex (mostly IT-based) projects where simultaneous or successive pieces of work ("Work Stages") could be farmed out by the project manager to the project team and returned done and quality checked. However, I've used various bits of it - PID, highlight reports, risk logs, issues logs, version control etc which are very useful, and it's good to identify clearly who the project sponsors and executive are. But real life just isn't as neat as P2 would have you think. It's useful as a discipline (like knowing latin is good for english grammar) and it also good to bluff with the jargon, but in order to make it really useful you need the whole project team to adopt it from the very start (and even loooong before the start) of the project. If implemented full scale, it would create a huge amount of admin - you could spend all day just updating logs - and you would need extra admin to be the "configuration librarian".

Overall, Roz, I'd say go on the course - at least the three days Foundation course, especially if you can get work to pay for it! Some places even do a free half-day taster. I can recommend Maven Training, where I did mine, as one of the leaders in the field. (Checking their website, I'm not sure about the PC-ness of the girls only course, but the price and the after-course massage do sound attractive!!) The others are SPOCE. If you do go on a course, can I stress that the pre-course reading is ESSENTIAL (i.e. learn it all out of the book, before you even start!) and evening homework is also set, so clear your social calendar.

Hope this has been helpful - sorry to rant on for so long...