I stumbled into my next topic while listening to Fresh Air on National Public Radio. In this episode, Terry Gross, the host, interviewed Economist Uwe Reinhardt to discuss the hidden costs and economics of health care. During the interview, Reinhardt relates an interesting story that summarizes the difference between European and American views on health care. Specifically, it illustrated a mindset that everyone knows they will get health care, and yet also realizes it won't be immediate. It reminded me of a rule I live by when advising my clients in the development of learning solutions. The rule is known as Triple Constraint. It's a project management concept introduced to me early in my career. You can Google Triple Constraint and get almost 700,000 hits.
For those of you for whom this is new info, Triple Constraint refers to the relationship between Quality (Scope), Cost (Resources) and Time (Schedule). I'm no Project Manager, and I cherish the PMs I know and get to work with, so I'll oversimplify this rule for purposes of this message. According to the rule, you can't have it all. I've been on plenty of projects during which time the needs of the business, or the requirements of the tools had to change to respond to external or internal factors. In these cases there was a change in scope (quality) of the deliverable. As a good partner to the operations, I was tasked with explaining that it would either take longer to make the change or cost extra. Never a fun conversation. Regardless of the cause of the change, my Ops partners needed to know that change costs, in either time, money, or both.
Organizational culture impacts design and development as well. Some organizations have a "get it done now" mentality, so that every project is urgent. Others have long, convoluted approval processes in which every VP needs to throw in two or more cents. Still others very strictly control spending and resources budgeted (plan on seeing this more often in these tough times). In every case, most organizations want the same thing: the best learning tools, for little or no money, right away.
So how do you get ahead of the problem? How can we, as learning professionals, manage our projects to quickly create inexpensive, high quality learning solutions ?
1. Define behavioral outcomes. The behavior change drives the design and allows the training team to pick only the activities and content that will affect changes in the learners.
2. Good enough is good enough. Everybody loves a fancy product. Fancy takes time and probably costs extra. If it doesn't, I'd question the quality of the product. Pick the very best activities and then do a great job packaging those items.
3. Know your end user. The deliverable has to fit within the world of the end user, not yours. Keep that in mind in the early stages and it'll save you time later. If end users can't use the tools, behavior won't change and you'll spend extra cycles fixing your tools.
4. Collaborate with business owners to set clear expectations. Get with the business owners, the front line operators, and make sure they have a say in what the final outcome looks like. They will appreciate being involved in the solution and will be ready when the tools are handed off.
5. Provide choices. My favorite strategy is to provide a menu, with pictures, of what proposed solutions might look like. This strategy allows me to offer "good, better, best" choices and allows the business to choose how much it wants to spend on the solution.
Making clients see that they can't have it all takes patience (easier said than done, trust me). Keeping them involved every step of the way will certainly alleviate tension when changes to the budget or timeline are required. In the end, your clients will respect your professionalism, business sense, forthright partnership and quality products.
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