ELearning/Project management primer

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Introduction

Instructional design models provide guidance for course development. However, by themselves they don't provide the tools for accomplishing the work on time and within a budget. This is where project management (PM) comes in. Instructional design and PM are parallel processes. They compliment each other rather than duplicate, and require different skills sets (Brandon, 2004a). The defining characteristic of projects is that they are temporary; they have a beginning and an end (Croxall, 2011) and therefore have a defined scope, resources, and schedule.

Facets of project mangement

1. The project management triangle

Project management seeks to manage three facets, or constraints, of projects (Sehmel, 2006):

  • Scope: content and delivery boundaries, including quality and performance standards
  • Resources: available finances, people, skills, materials, time, content access, processes, and tools
  • Schedule: who is going to do what and when

The project management triangle (Figure 1) illustrates the relationship among the three facets: a change in one will affect the other two. For example, if a schedule contains too much padding, the project ties up resources that could be put to other uses. If scope is increased, the need for resources expands and the schedule extends. Resources are placed at the bottom of the triangle as it provides the foundation for what one can reasonably do with the other two.

The circle represents communication throughout the project between members of the development team as well as the development team and the client. It includes all the initial planning, risk analysis, status reports, change management issues, and project follow-up. This circle can be too small or too large - too little communication and the project may fail its purpose and unfold contrary to the wishes of the customer. Too much communication and an endless stream of meetings impedes progress and causes confusion.

Typically, communication is strong and frequent among team members and clients during project startup, but as time passes it becomes less constant as individuals communicate on an as-needed basis and by email (forgetting to cc: all, messages get buried), leaving a fractured view of performance, problems, and progress. Stakeholders are often informed of critical issues at a stage when the impact on costs, timelines and scope are significant or irreversible. Inadequate communication of project status and issues is a function of stakeholder needs and expectations not being managed appropriately.

Project manager

The project manager is responsible for the day-to-day running of the project within defined authorities for cost and schedule. There can only be one project manager (Croxzll, 2011). The manager:

  • Develops and maintains the project plan
  • Ensures project deliverables are provided within established scope, time, and budget
  • Manages project resources
  • Manages stakeholder communication and project reporting

Skill sets for successful project managers include organizational, communication, and influencing skills, the ability to respond to the unexpected, and the ability to monitor progress and change course as needed. Most often, project managers do not supervise team members: they are "loaned" to the project by line managers or, in the case of instructional development, functional managers (e.g., subject matter expertise, instructional design, graphic arts, audio-video production, programming). In many organizations the instructional designer acts as project manager, formally or informally. As a result, the project manager must rely on informal power as opposed to formal power.

Scheduling and chairing regular project meetings is the primary tool for managing the project lifecycle, described below. This means scheduling the meetings; establishing agendas around issues of scope, time, budget; facilitating discussion and problem solving; tracking issues and decisions; and reporting to all stakeholders as agreed. It is very important, then, to establish meeting and communication groundrules early on.

Project lifecycle

There is an entire body of knowledge and practice in the project management sphere, so we will limit ourselves to the basic four-phase process.

Phase 1: Concept. Justifying the need for the project and preparing the preliminary product or service description, scope of work, deliverables, milestones, cost, quality and performance specifications.

Phase 2: Definition. Creating the project plan including assumptions, detailed scope of work, budget, and schedule. Contingency planning may also be necessary whenever assumptions are "iffy" (see below).

Phase 3: Implementation. Executing the plan, managing schedules, quality, budget, and changes in scope.

Phase 4: Delivery. Product or service delivery and sign-off.

Evaluation of results is not normally a part of project scope. It may be a separate project or part of higher level "project portfolio management".

A crucial relationship exists between project phases and revisions to the project. As we see in Figure 2, making changes during the concept and early planning phases is ripe for adding value with little or no extras cost. As work progresses, however, changes become more disruptive, difficult, and costly.

2. Project management change and cost relationship
2. Project management change and cost relationship

Scope of work

The scope constitutes the products and/or services to be delivered by the project and their associated quality and performance standards. Establishing scope is essential for successful projects. Without it, projects grow, quality varies, costs rise, schedules collapse and projects fail. It is especially important for all stakeholders to agree on scope before the project begins so there is a common understanding of what it will accomplish. When establishing scope, it works best to focus on the big picture without getting bogged down in details. It's a good time to surface assumptions, constraints, and risks that will need to be managed during implementation. Examples of areas that could be examined and clarified include the following (Anderson, 2009). As much as possible, the effort should result in a list of things that are within scope and out of scope.

  • Types of deliverables
  • Standards to be met
  • Types of data to be collected
  • Data sources
  • Organizations and people involved
  • Product functionality
  • Training and other support


Anderson (2009) suggests a scope definition template to aid the process:

In Scope Out of Scope (Exclusions) Assumptions Constraints
Items we will definitely manage and deliver Items we will not be responsible for - the assumption is that someone else will have responsibility. Exclusions are things not included in your project, but influence the success of the project. Knowledge about the project that is taken to be true or correct for the purposes of project planning. Assumptions are circumstances and events that need to occur for the project to be successful, but are outside the total control of the project team. Assumptions involve a chance that they will not occur and so this risk must be analyzed and planned for. Known restrictions that might include start/finish dates, time, deliverable or milestone dates, budget limitations, resourcing limits, vendor restraints, etc.

 

 

 

Issues not resolved. Issues where agreement has not been reached or which are unclear and must be clarified and agreed upon before the project can proceed.

 

Questions for establishing learning development scope

Paradis (2014) suggests the following questions when working with clients to appropriately scope a training project:

  1. What is the business problem that you are trying to solve?
  2. What does success look like?
  3. What business group or person is sponsoring the project?
  4. Who are the primary audiences affected and how many people in each audience?
  5. What are the audiences' attitudes and expectations toward training and this program in general?
  6. What behavior changes are required for the project to be successful?
  7. How important is tracking and reporting for this program? How do you currently track and report learning engagements?
  8. How flexible are you with the structure, approach, and creativity with this program?
  9. What existing content can be leveraged?
  10. What resources are you able to provide to the project from a subject matter expertise standpoint?
  11. What milestones and dates are critical to meet?
  12. What is your budget? What are the biggest priorities among cost, time, and quality?

Resources

As indicated above, project resources form the basis upon which scope and schedule must operate. Should resources be invested in the short-term, or perhaps over a longer time-frame? Do we set out to accomplish all project goals immediately or incrementally? Do we go for "spectacular" or can the same be accomplished with something more mundane?

The concept phase is where the necessary project resources are identified and justified so that a GO/NO GO decision can be made before work begins. It may mean establishing the project's priority in relation to other projects competing for the same resources. It can mean identifying who will contribute resources such as people, space, time, tools, and money. These decisions need to be made by all stakeholders, especially those with authority to consign resources, so necessary commitments are made to ensure project success. To make these decisions, stakeholders need upfront resource and cost estimates for each alternative. For most projects, estimates at this stage will be low in accuracy unless stakeholders are willing to devote upfront resources to arrive at more accurate ones. As the project moves into the definition phase the level of accuracy can be successively refined. The Project Management Institute (2013) provides a useful generalization of costs, staffing and time commitments over the life of a project (Figure 3). We see a gradual increase of all three during concept and definition, then a rapid increase peaking about two-thirds through implementation, and then a steep decline during delivery.

3. Cost, staffing, and time commitment over the project life cycle
3. Cost, staffing, and time commitment over the project life cycle


During implementation, the project manager monitors resource use against the plan. The adage, "if you can't measure it, you can't manage it," applies here. Tracking spending, staffing levels, time spent on each task, and use of other resources is essential.

As with most budgetary matters, reality rarely conforms to even the most carefully prepared plan. When variations inevitably occur, the project manager must reallocate resources to meet the circumstances while keeping the overall project on time and within budget. This is when communication with stakeholders is especially important to maintain their trust and commitment.

Schedule

Scheduling is a process of identifying the various tasks necessary to meet project objectives, and placing them on a schedule in a coordinated and time-efficient manner. Reh (2012) suggests the following steps to establish the project schedule. Remember that scheduling will begin with rough estimates during the concept phase, be refined during planning, and likely adjusted during execution.

  1. List, in order, all the tasks that need to be completed. Tasks are "units of accomplishment", and complex or involved tasks need to subdivided into their constituent parts. How far to break down these units? From a project management perspective, it makes the most sense to stop subdividing tasks at the point at which the work will take the time equal to the smallest time units you want to schedule, by day or week for example.

  2. Assign a duration to each task. Educated guesses may be acceptable during conception, but a more reliable approach is necessary for real planning. The most reliable estimates will come from those charged with the tasks, using a three-step approach:

    • If you devoted all your time to this one task, how many hours will it take to complete?
    • How many hours a day or week can you devote to the task?
    • Divide the number of hours by the hours per week or day devoted to the task to arrive at the number of days or weeks to assign to the task. If a task will take 8 hours to complete, and I can spend 2 hours a day on it, the time to completion would be 4 days.

  3. Identify and allocate the resources required for each task.

  4. Determine the order in which the tasks should be scheduled. It can be a waste of time to schedule everything sequentially, so we need a more sophisticated approach. For this, we need to know about dependencies and the critical path.

Dependencies

Some tasks are dependent on others. Most of the time, this means that the predecessor must be accomplished before the successor can begin. This is called a finish-to-start relationship. Some times activities may need to be coordinated so they begin at the same time (start-to-start), and others may need to finish at the same time (finish-to-finish). These relationships must be identified before scheduling begins (Barron & Barron, 2013). An example of a finish-to-start relationship would be the written narrative must be created before audio recording can begin. Start-to-start relationships can be seen in two tasks that depend on the same resource like a rented facility. And a finish-to-finish relationship can be seen when graphics and video production must be completed before assembly can take place. Not all tasks will have these relationships; we can term them as "free floating" marked by their flexibility in start and finish dates.

To accomplish this, Anderson (2009) suggests creating a precedence network, visually linking the identified relationships. These linked tasks mark the first step in creating the schedule. Free floating tasks should also be included, so you end the step with pieces of various lengths, some linked together and some not.

4. Precedence network
4. Precedence network

Critical path

The longest series of linked dependencies constitutes the project's critical path. It is the longest duration path through the schedule and determines the duration of the entire project: the sequence of activities that must be completed on schedule for the entire project to be completed on schedule. If an activity on the critical path is delayed for a day, the entire project will be delayed a day unless another task on the path can be adjusted.

Creating the schedule

As indicated above, visually representing tasks and their time requirements greatly improves out ability to juggle the relationships in our minds so we can create the best schedule. Two common ways to visualize a schedule are the Gant and PERT charts. Gant charts (Figure 5) represent tasks as horizontal bars with their length representing task time requirements. The bars are placed in rows at intervals representing their start dates. Dependencies are illustrated by the same finish-start, start-start, or finish-finish dates. PERT charts (Figure 6) use arrows to represent tasks and circles to represent milestones or events, numbered in 10-point increments to allow additional milestones to be entered without the need for renumbering. Time frames are noted on the task lines. As we see below, Gant charts better visualize the timing and duration of tasks while PERT charts better illustrate task dependency relationships.

Gant chart PERT chart
5. Gant chart 6. PERT chart

Conclusion

Whether formally or informally, learning projects need to be managed if they are to meet cost, time, and specification parameters. Even informally, the methods help identify dependencies, time requirements, and tasks that can overlap. The larger and costlier the project, the higher the need for project management and a designated project manager.


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