Over the last few weeks, I have been boasting about standardizing your course development process with the use of templates. A surprising amount of the design and development process can be sped up by taking a little admin time to set up templates.
Project schedules can get complicated quickly as resources have other priorities and time away from the office. Whether you are the person planning the project or the talent allocated to it, you need a high-level view of milestones and deadlines. There are dozens of project management applications available, and I have tried several of them. The one thing I have learned is that they all have a learning curve and people are rarely consistent in keeping them up-to-date. To put it bluntly, they can be a waste of money. No matter how many times I have been on a team adopting new project management software, I always go to an old process I learned when I first started writing training.
Like most planners, I love spreadsheets. They are easy to customize, nimble, and most people with a computer have access to spreadsheet software. Instead of fancy project software, I keep a color-coded, ADDIE-inspired spreadsheet with all of my resources, projects, and status. You can download a copy of the template by click the picture below.
How to use this template
This template is intended to be a high-level view of projects, resource availability, and any obvious gaps. Any project requiring in-depth work breakdowns should be tracked in another tab which can be broken down by the week or even daily if that is required. Here are a few advantages of using this style template for learning and development projects.
- Color
coding makes it easy to quickly view the project phase. - High-level scheduling shows the team each other’s priorities at a glance.
- Projects of the same size often have similar timelines, making them easy to copy and paste across projects.
- The use of comments gives individual the ability to keep the project team aware of status.
- Cloud storage quickly enables real-time collaboration on this document.
How does your team manage your busy work-load? Does your team really update their project management software? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.
