There are many moving parts to an eLearning project. You might be working with instructional designers, developers, and contract workers like voiceover artists or videographers. There are often subject matter experts to consult and stakeholders to satisfy. And that’s all before you even factor in the learners themselves!
Having a solid eLearning project management plan in place will make your work much smoother.
New eLearning developers and project managers often fall prey to the temptation to jump into the tool and start building content right away. Resist. As the saying goes, “You have to crawl before you can walk.” In eLearning projects, you have to plan before you can develop. It’s not as catchy, I know.
The phases of an eLearning project can be broadly categorized as follows:
As you can see, development doesn’t start until step 5! The good news is, there are tons of resources available to help you manage your next eLearning project.
There are also a few key skills that will enable you to be a more successful eLearning project manager. You’ll want to have a basic understanding of instructional design methods and principles, as well as strong collaboration and teamwork skills. Joining an eLearning community forum or LinkedIn group, as well as attending eLearning-focused webinars can help you gain an understanding of instructional design. These and other soft skills like listening and coaching will help you get the best work out of your team.
Before you begin any project, you’ll want to schedule a call with all the key players to iron out the details you’ll need as you begin planning out your project.
To help you during the planning and content gathering phases, check out our Top Strategies to Avoid a Change of Scope checklist.
This list outlines the types of information you need to gather from your client or subject matter expert before you begin development. These strategies are based on time-tested practices that our own custom eLearning development team has honed over the years of creating award-winning learning solutions.
Our team covers all the topics on this checklist in a single one-hour call with clients before kicking off a project. That’s right, ONE call. Think of all the meetings you can avoid by covering the checklist topics in one call!
Using the checklist, you’ll learn how to define your success criteria, outline your project scope, plan for contingencies, and more. This checklist will set you up for success as you start storyboarding and move into development.
For some storyboarding help, check out our blueprinting template.
You can use this in conjunction with the other checklist to make sure you’re gathering all the information you need to develop a rocking eLearning solution. Organizing all your information into a blueprint or storyboard makes development go so much faster!
You won’t have to backtrack at the last minute to hunt down a key fact or process and you can use your storyboard to make sure stakeholders or clients are on board with your project direction before you start building it out.
Finally, download our Digital Training Creation Checklist. This resource can be used at the beginning or end of your project to double-check all the little details. After all, it’s the little details that can take an eLearning module from boring to awesome.
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