Monday 19 November 2012

Good luck!

Well, the guru is back home after yet another great World tour. Thanks to everyone I met in all those interesting places, and good luck this week in your exams. Let me know what you thought...

Tuesday 18 September 2012

The guru on tour again

Well, it's time for another World tour. The guru will be in:

Kiev, Ukraine (21-24 September)
Bucharest, Romania (27-29 September)
Cape Town, SA (6-9 October)
Johannesburg, SA (10-14 October)
Moscow, Russia (19 Oct - 3 Nov)
Bucharest, Romania (5-7 November)

There will be CIMA exam techniques events in each location, so contact your local CIMA office for details...

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Prioritisation in the Case Study (T4B)

CAUTION - THIS POST RELATES TO THE CIMA 2010 SYLLABUS, SO IS NO LONGER VALID


Summit wrote:

Hi David,

We identify & prioritise from the unseen and then start evaluating the issues and so on.

My question is the issues would be Financial/Non Financials, regarding Financials we would be able to prioritise them only once we have calculated the NPV and other relevant calculation . So do we do the calculations first and then prioritise the main issues or do we prioritise based on the unseen information and then do the calculations to be used in judgement/discussion?

Thanks
Summit

The main ways of prioritising issues are, according to CIMA, urgency (timescale) and impact.  Quite often there are clear indications of the urgency of an issue in the unseen, such as 'this project begins in 6 weeks', or 'we have a meeting next week'.

You are correct in your assumption that, in order to determine the financial impact of an issue, it may be necessary to perform a calculation. For other issues, it may simply be a matter of identifying a figure from the unseen.

I would therefore suggest that any calculations relating to the issues (rather than the options to resolve those issues) should be performed before deciding on prioritisation.

Monday 9 July 2012

Study resources for CMGA/CPGA

CAUTION - THIS POST RELATES TO THE CIMA 2010 SYLLABUS, SO IS NO LONGER VALID


Anonymous wrote:

Hi Sir, I am wondering what should I buy that can give me lots of questions to prepare for the masters gateway program as practicing is the key to me? BPP and CIMA study etc all have limited practice questions. Please guide me. Regards.

There's no need to buy anything - start with the free stuff that CIMA has made available. You can get access to all of the past Gateway exams through cimaglobal.com, and the answers and post-exam guides by logging into MyCIMA, so that is a start, but I guess that most of those questions are in the BPP/Kaplan/CIMA material? You might also look for suitable questions from the past E2/P2/F2 exams? CIMA has made this easier for you, by providing tables showing which past exam questions cover which Learning Outcomes. You should, of course, concentrate on the types of question (and the Learning Outcomes) that are examined in the Gateway exam. Here's the link to the table for E2. I hope that helps.

Thursday 10 May 2012

T4B 'revision'

CAUTION - THIS POST RELATES TO THE CIMA 2010 SYLLABUS, SO IS NO LONGER VALID


Thanks to Kugesh for his comment on the 'last minute revision' post, regarding preparation for the T4B Case Study.

By far the best preparation for the Case Study is to practise lots of mock exams. The problem is, you really need feedback in order to improve. It's very difficult to see how to improve your answers if all you can do is compare your answer to a suggested answer. This is just one of those exams where you need help from a (good) tutor.

I know that many of you don't have access to a college, but there are several websites where you can get feedback on your mock exams. I know they charge you, but getting feedback is much more effective than just ploughing on doing your own thing (and, maybe, not really improving).

Kugesh asked for advice on some specific aspects of Case Study:

Answer planning: Having a good plan is the key to producing a good report. Your planning (including doing your calculations, as you need them in order to complete your planning process) should take you about an hour in total. This is the stage at which you decide the issues to deal with, prioritise, identify options to resolve each issue, evaluate the options, and decide on your recommendations. All this should be done in note form, of course, so you don't spend too long on the planning.

Discussion: You shouldn't spend too long discussing the issues - the emphasis of your report should be on the recommendations (and justifying them), as this gets 40% of the marks.

Prioritisation: Look at the urgency of resolving each issue. In the unseen material it often says when a decision needs to be made. Use this as the basis for your prioritisation.

Recommendation: This is key, as it gets so many marks. Say, very clearly, WHAT you think they should do. Your justification should also be good, so explain (in detail) WHY you think they should do this. Then clarify WHO should do exactly what, and BY WHEN. The recommendations section should be at least 1/3 of your report.

I hope this helps, Kugesh (and the rest of you).