Wow, I can’t believe how long its been since I blogged. I want to assure anyone who still might be looking at my blog that this is not because of a lack of interest, but rather an indication of how busy I have been.
For those that are not aware, I have been working for an international airport developing a catalogue of eLearning for them. At times I have been working on multiple projects at once and have found it stressful. I’m not sure if I have spoken about this topic before, but how do you manage multiple projects at once?
The answer to this question is project management. You need to plan your entire development cycle down to the smallest detail. This eliminates that point in your work where you sit there, wondering what to do next. If you break it down to enough small points, you know exactly what you need to accomplish each and every day. Here is an example of what I mean:
1. Meet with stakeholder and discuss the goals of training
2. Meet with subject matter experts and identify the steps or topics that need to be covered to achieve the goals of training
3. Write a learning plan (proposal for training) that shows what you intend to develop and why it will achieve the stakeholders goals
4. Schedule a meeting where the learning plan can be discussed
5. Revise learning plan based on feedback from meeting
6. Schedule a second meeting where you seek sign-off of learning plan
7. Begin your development of training, and so
Of course I assign dates and how much time each of these steps will take. This continues with the rest of ADDIE and I storyboard my courses, usually go through two or three rounds of reviews, followed by my development in the authoring tool with a few rounds of reviews as well.
The advantage of using this detailed approach is that you can be very accurate in estimating when you can deliver a project. It also keeps you on point. Have you ever arrived at work and wondered, what should I work on next? This answers that question. Go to your project plan and see what the next task is that you need to complete.
Where this gets tricky is when you are managing multiple projects at once.