Project Management and E-Learning: MORE is Worse
By Lou Russell

E-Learning projects are different than traditional learning projects. In general, the key word that describes this difference is MORE. 

An e-learning project is actually two projects: a software project combined with a performance enhancement (‘training’) project. That means MORE scope, MORE stakeholders, MORE risk, MORE duration, MORE budget pressures, and MORE opportunities for communication to fail.

Pitfalls

Like traditional training projects, e-learning shares common pitfalls.

• Developers tend to ‘assume’ that the benefit to the business is obvious (“Of course the organization needs leadership!”) rather than force the issue asking. It takes courage to ask the internal customers to take the difficult step to define how the company investment in training will increase revenue, avoid costs, or improve service. If the customer cannot answer that question, the project will flounder—and likely fail. It is not an easy or risk-free question to answer, and many customers will avoid it.  By delivering training that does not have a clear business objective, training professionals, in their attempt to be helpful, have degraded their own reputations as contributors to achieving the business strategy. 

• Assuming the business benefit is documented and clear, the training professional may leap ahead to design (the fun part!) and assume that learning objectives are obvious.  Because learning objectives—what workers will be able to do what after learning has occurred—define how the success of the training will be measured, this neglect creates a strong likelihood that the scope of the training will creep insidiously until the program doesn’t deliver anything well.  

In addition to these common project risks, e-learning projects are plagued by MORE.  Software (IT) projects have a great deal of uncertainty.  Any programmer will tell you that developing software is a great deal like going out to your garden in the early spring: you’re never really sure what’s going to come up.

In addition to the obvious increased risk from ever-changing technology, e-learning inherits these pitfalls:

Scope creep. The scope of an e-learning project is always much larger than the scope of an instructor-led training (ILT) program. Scope is defined by the number of stakeholders, meaning the people who either provide something to the project (for example, subject matter expertise) or get something from the project (for example, learning). The stakeholders of an ILT program are typically

• learners
• executive sponsor (funding)
• subject matter expert(s)
• course developer.  

In e-learning projects, assuming you already have an authoring system, you minimally add the following stakeholders:

• LMS (Learning Management System) manager
• e-learning developer (authoring expert)
• graphic designer
• web manager (hosting)
• security analyst (firewall)
• hardware technician. 

Just imagine having a meeting with all these people to work out due dates. Indeed, one of the big differences between e-learning projects and ILT projects is the increased number of meetings you must attend.

Increased risk. Not surprisingly, the risk factors for e-learning projects are MORE in number, MORE complex, and MORE difficult to mitigate. The typical ILT project risks are

• the SME is not available
• the executive sponsor has changed the learning objectives but not the budget
• the copy machine is jammed. 

Add to the list for e-learning:

• You are the lowest priority in terms of getting your application hosted by IT.
• You are in a similarly long line to interface with the LMS which compliance policies require.
• The authoring software does not support the interaction, graphics, screen shots, video, music, and so forth that you need to deliver effective e-learning. Of course, the next release will do all of those things six months from now.
• Your e-learning developer is really a web developer, which is not the same thing.
• The corporate firewall prevents people from using your e-learning (drop down windows).
• All the desktop machines will need to be upgraded with more memory before they can run your e-learning.
• Because everything is MORE when it’s e-learning, your project will take longer.  Longer projects have more chance to be changed, cancelled, morphed, dissected and ignored.
• Because everything is MORE when it’s e-learning, your project will cost more. This also increases the likelihood that you will be outsourcing some of the work to external vendors, which adds the overhead of contract negotiation to your project plan.  

As a project manager of an e-learning project, this requires you to have better influencing skills. The behaviors that are critical to your success in juggling so many risk factors and stakeholders are

• agility; be willing and able to change at a moment’s notice
• resiliency; don’t get mad or even when things don’t go the way you planned
• collaboration; build alliances, informal and formal.  I suggest lots of food gifts to the technical people for jobs well done
• communication; create a Communications Plan to share status with all the stakeholders on a regular basis— “Bad News Early is Good News”
• Flexible Structure; at all times have a plan and be ready to adapt it to another plan.  

Solutions

Because e-learning projects are more chaotic, it is usually best to implement a project management approach that is built for chaos. A similar evolution has happened on the software side. Although linear approaches are more common and more often taught, an agile approach is typically more effective in this situation. Using the traditional approach, you would plan to

• create a project charter (business case) for the whole thing
• create a project plan for the whole thing
• build the whole thing, test it, finish it
• give the whole thing to the learner.

For e-learning, it’s better for you to create a release-based, iterative approach to development.  Project management is still critical, but done a piece of the project at a time. Here’s the sample flow:

1. Create a Project Charter (Business Case) for the whole thing.

2. Create a Project Plan for the first iteration.

3. Build the first iteration, test it, play with it, finish it.

4. Deliver it to the learner.

5. Go to Step 2 and keep doing iterations until your executive sponsor says you are done.

The best way to summarize the differences between the project management of ILT and e-learning course is with a small story:

There were once pigs that lived in a land that was quickly running out of food. This land was on a large body of water  No pig had ever ventured across the water. Eventually the pigs decided that they had no choice but to use their last remaining food to build a boat to sail across the water in hopes of finding more food on the other side. And so they did.

Your job as project manager of an e-learning project is similar to that of the pig manager. You have pushed off your project and you are in the middle of the body of water. Just like the manager of the pig’s project, your more important job is to keep the other pigs from eating the boat.

Stay agile…

Published: August 2006