The Cost of 17 Days

What is the true cost of content development?

In the industry of workplace training, there is a predetermined estimate of the hours needed to develop training class materials, training courses, eLearning courses, VLT courses, etc.

For example, each type of workplace learning deliverable has a separate, calculated number of hours for:

Creating content from scratch
Making basic updates/modifications to existing content
Adding major updates (like a software upgrade, major implementation or process change)
Converting from one learning format to another format

For this particular project, 17 full days of reviews, meetings, and revisions were required to produce a single 14-page document.
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realistic set of measurements.

Having worked in the corporate (healthcare, legal, retail, telecom, financial and mortgage) training organizations for 20+ years, I understand the need for a realistic set of measurements. It is necessary to calculate the number of resources needed to produce quality workplace courses and materials for a given project.

Many of my prior projects required Visio workflows, Quick Reference Guides, and extensive hands-on exercises, with 200+ page User Guides, and matching Instructor / Leader’s Guides to be created and tested.

A recent instructional design project required revisions for a 14-page document to be used for new hire training. The overall design, formatting template, and content components had been decided prior to my arrival, and thus I had little input. I was hired to produce the documentation to meet the client specifications.

cost of the final documentation

In my past work life, I have trained new hires, both as contractors and new employees within an organization. I have developed a new hire “Train-the-Trainer” program for several organizations. In each project, the cost of the final documentation or course produced increases with every revision, materials testing, pilot course, and meeting review.

For this particular project, 17 full days of reviews, meetings and revisions were required to produce a single 14-page document. Factor in the additional labor costs for the upcoming pilot class (which will utilize the document) and the costs continue to escalate.

Could the final product have been completed with fewer review meetings and fewer changes? Possibly.

Would the client achieve team buy-in or commitment without the review meetings? Maybe not.

choose to measure the value of the content

Ultimately, the development production and distribution costs during the 17 days is not the only measurement.

Instead, let’s choose to measure the value of the content for new hires and the utilization rate within the organization within the coming year(s).
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