A few years back, a group of entrepreneurs were pondering at the question every e Learning organization has: what is the right balance between cost, development time and quality. No organization is immune from this dilemma.
The entrepreneurs were trying to figure out a way to break the paradigm and find a way where organizations would be able to reduce cost, development time while maintaining or even augmenting quality and reliability. It was no surprise to anybody that labor had, by far, the largest impact in overall cost and on time-to-market.
The analysis took many different paths, but in the end, the conclusion was that a method to reduce labor without affecting the end product was needed.
A detailed value chain analysis for the e Learning development process was conducted and several conclusions were reached:
a- The instructional design process is critical and where the learning strategy is formulated and to a significant degree, executed.
b-The graphic design process is essential for the user experience; however, parallel to the creative aspect, there are underlying mechanical, repetitive, time consuming processes.
c- The programming stage, needed for most things more complex than a page turner, was mostly mechanical, prone to wrong interpretations, programming bugs and human error.
The group also interviewed end customers and created a value matrix, where different stages were given different "value score". The result was that the end user appreciated an engaging story, dynamic, interactive and effective experience, usable interface, but did not care much how many work hours it took to design the interface or how many days it took to program the functionality. The user just cared for a great learning experience.
A bit unfair for the development team, but users pressed for a better product, faster and as always, with a limited budget.
After going through several options, the group chose the winning solution was radical process automation through technology. By automating those time consuming, repetitive tasks, organizations would be able to dramatically save labor, be able to deliver much more quickly and reduce human error.
Next step: creating the technology..
The entrepreneurs were trying to figure out a way to break the paradigm and find a way where organizations would be able to reduce cost, development time while maintaining or even augmenting quality and reliability. It was no surprise to anybody that labor had, by far, the largest impact in overall cost and on time-to-market.
The analysis took many different paths, but in the end, the conclusion was that a method to reduce labor without affecting the end product was needed.
A detailed value chain analysis for the e Learning development process was conducted and several conclusions were reached:
a- The instructional design process is critical and where the learning strategy is formulated and to a significant degree, executed.
b-The graphic design process is essential for the user experience; however, parallel to the creative aspect, there are underlying mechanical, repetitive, time consuming processes.
c- The programming stage, needed for most things more complex than a page turner, was mostly mechanical, prone to wrong interpretations, programming bugs and human error.
The group also interviewed end customers and created a value matrix, where different stages were given different "value score". The result was that the end user appreciated an engaging story, dynamic, interactive and effective experience, usable interface, but did not care much how many work hours it took to design the interface or how many days it took to program the functionality. The user just cared for a great learning experience.
A bit unfair for the development team, but users pressed for a better product, faster and as always, with a limited budget.
After going through several options, the group chose the winning solution was radical process automation through technology. By automating those time consuming, repetitive tasks, organizations would be able to dramatically save labor, be able to deliver much more quickly and reduce human error.
Next step: creating the technology..
