Be Your Own Time Manager

June 11, 2007

crowdone One of the more difficult aspects of designing learning materials is the task of time estimation requirements. It is inevitable that you will be repeatedly asked to predict when a project will be completed. This requirement can be quite annoying, as it is highly unlikely that you will actually get to determine how much time you need according to the tasks you envision, but more how much time the stakeholders are willing to grant you. Whether it is product launches, release dates, quarterly requirements or a new state requirement that needs to be adhered to, there is always an anticipated date held by the people asking you the question of “When will that be available?”

This places you in the position of 1) trying to determine what their expected date is, 2) trying to adjust your plan for deliverables to meet that date, and 3) guessing how much time you can request to actually accomplish your tasks. The ADDIE model, or any educational or learning design model will not help here. They are not designed with time and resource constraints in mind.

So, it is up to you to determine what is an acceptable cost for what you want to accomplish. By cost, I mean Cost as a function of Time and Resources, though you may interpret Cost as the dollar amount that you are asking for as well. Either way, you need to determine what is an acceptable cost to the people wanting work out of you and what you can deliver for that price.

Let us create a scenario that you are a full-time, non-manager, curriculum development employee of a company and have a manager asking for learning content for a product to be released in one month's time. The product is technical in nature and not quite complete. Between the various managers, producers, testers, marketers and technical writers, there is enough content to create a decent online course to explain its basic functions to an audience at launch.

Your manager tells you that you need to come up with a plan for producing a learning module for use on the Learning Management System (LMS), today, and include the time projections for each task, as well as the total time required to produce the learning module. Now, you have already been told that you have only three weeks to produce a complete deliverable, so what does your manager want?

She is probably looking for a plan of action that describes what you will be working on, in what order, for how long, and an indication of recognizable milestones of accomplishment. But, how can you produce an action plan with anticipated times when you have not even begun the work, and do not have a clear idea of how much time each task will actually take? This is when a time estimate comes into play. You need to break down the work into definable tasks and predict, based upon your past experiences with similar tasks, how much time each will take.

But wait! Haven't we skipped over the Analysis and Design phase of the ADDIE model and jumped right into Development? Yes, we have. Usually, the Analysis and Design phases are remarkably compressed, if you have the time to really consider them at all. In most organizations, the analysis typically follows the stated goal of the training and the design is often conducted during the development phase. This does not mean that you will not be required to document these processes and prove that they were done, just that you will probably not be given a distinct block of time in which to perform them. The point is that you will need to determine how long, in what order and with what dependencies a task will be performed to reach an objective.

Here are some rules of thumb to help you make time estimations:

  1. Break down each activity into measurable increments. DO NOT report these to your manager. They don't care; they only want to hear how each activity gets you closer to the goal, not how you get there.
  2. Add up the time required to perform each increment and then add 10% for switching between them.
  3. If you are performing the activity yourself, then multiply the time required by 1.5 times and 2.5 times, to give the shortest and longest time possible.
  4. If you are dependent upon other groups or individuals for dependencies, then multiply the time required by 3 and 5, respectively.
  5. List out the activities and how they help reach your goal and present them to your manager.
  6. If they say that the time requirements are too great, then present them with reduced options, and lesser results, to reduce the time required.

Of course, these time estimations will change if other resources become available or were withdrawn.

Having a plan will help build your confidence in suggesting time requirements, and provide you a blueprint on which to base future estimations.

Jon


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