Small variations in the entry variables can produce large changes in your exit variables. Author: Juan Carlos Vidal, Production Manager Planning your eLearning projects ahead of time allows you to execute it properly regarding quality, costs and time. In the production process, the little details count as much or more than big aspects if you want to control the variations that might occur in your outcomes. It is common for a lot of people to take part in the planning process and in the project's general aspects; nevertheless, the fewer people involved the better, because tuning in the basic aspects that make an eLearning project successful is what sometimes gets harder to do when there are a lot of people pitching in ideas. These variables are harder to measure because they require technical, specific knowledge to understand them. Variables, such as the ones mentioned above, that take a part in an animation's design process are: number of drawing lines, amount of steps, quantity of text per image, quantity of text per step, amount of images per step, number and level of difficulty of the programmed actions, amount of characters or new scenarios, etc. When there is no control or knowledge over the effect of the variables that make up each task, they're process is usually called "black box" because its results (cost, time and quality) are really hard to control or they present a variation range wider than expected. Another important aspect is controlling the sequencing of these variables. If you're aware of the possible sequencing and its effects, you'll be able to gain control over the process and adapt it to obtain the desired results. For example: if you want to reduce its delivery time, you can subdivide and overlay the micro execution of tasks in order to achieve minimum production time. A way to compensate for the lack of control in the process is by clearances. The inconvenient of doing this is that they absorb a lot of inefficiencies that don't give an added value and that make the process slower, more expensive and more prompt to mistakes. So, the more entry variables you know the better control you'll have over the results. This control becomes more important as the flexibility of the process increases. This means that any increase in the variety of your products or the answers they demand from the process, will require more control over it to satisfy the demands. A less flexible process, that isn't controlled properly, has a tendency of establishing a satisfaction point, which is harder to change as time passes by. If your process isn't handled properly, there's a good chance that frustration, wearing out, breaching of goals, blockage, etc might occur, that's why it is important to have at least one person in charge of the productive process of your eLearning courses. How can SHIFT help you control your eLearning development process? SHIFT is a powerful tool that allows you to control every step of your eLearning development process because it automates most repetitive tasks associated with eLearning development. Through a single login screen, based on profile, the user will have access to only the courses and the roles within those courses assigned to him. No room for unauthorized people or unskilled people to change things. By integrating all users, administrative work and especially document traffic (among team members) is eliminated. The development process is parallel among team members and SHIFT is responsible for managing the complexity.

UK eLearning consultant Clive Shepard recently discussed Shift on Clive on Learning. He talks about our model as a real plus to eLearning developers: But what's interesting about this tool is not that it's web-based, but in the commercial model: Purchasers have completely free access to the tool to develop content. MindMuze (North American Distributors) are proactive in providing support and advice to help you both creatively and technically in coming up with effective content. You pay only when you publish content, on the basis of the number of 'pages' in the content. This is an output-oriented model, so MindMuze has every incentive to help you make productive use of the tool. Why? Because they make money from what you produce rather than from the product sitting on the shelf. In adopting this model, MindMuze are taking on a lot more of the commercial risk. They are also demonstrating a great deal of confidence in their product. With our new Brandon Hall Awards, we are definitely confident about SHIFT - more details coming soon!

Narrated by celebrated environmentalist Dr. Suzuki, this complimentary fully interactive guide can be accessed from the comfort of your laptop or desktop. It's packed with a wealth of content and tools, as well as an avatar of Dr.Suzuki to help you navigate through the program. The eLearning module can help employers and employees:

Author: Ing. Luis D. Arguello Araya, MPM, PMP. When managing a project, you need to document both the customer's expectations as well as the project's history, based on important decisions that will be made along the way. To do so, you can use the process groups that are suggested and globally accepted as best practices in project management and then develop templates that you can use during the project's lifecycle. You can choose which documents to use depending on the project's characteristics, but here's a list of the most common templates you should consider: Initiation Business Case: To justify the financial investment in your project, you need to write a Business Case. It lists the costs and benefits, so everyone knows what the return on investment (ROI) will be. Feasibility Study: Before you kick-off your project, you will need to determine whether your project is feasible, using a Feasibility Study. Project Charter: You will then need to document the objectives, scope, team, timeframes and deliverables in a Project Charter. Planning Project Plan: Create a Project Plan listing all of the tasks required to undertake your project from start to finish. Every task must be scheduled, so you know what needs to be done and when. Resource Plan: Next, you will need to plan your resources by documenting the money, equipment and materials needed for your project. Quality Plan: Set quality targets, so that the project deliverables meet your customer's expectations. Risk Plan: All of the risks need to be documented as well as their likelihood and impact on the project. Communication Plan: Plan your communications, so that you send the right messages to the right people, at the right time. Execution Time Management: use Timesheets to track time spent on your project. Then update your Project's Plan with your Timesheet data to see whether your project is still within schedule. Cost Management: Track your costs using Expense Forms. Every expense is formally logged and approved, so that you can confirm at any time that you are currently under budget. Change Management: Document each change on the project scope, using Change Forms. So you are able to control change ensuring that your project is always on track. Risk Management: Use Risk Forms to document each risk associated with the project. You can then manage project risk carefully to guarantee that nothing will affect the project's schedule or budget. Issue Management: As you move further along the project's schedule, you will see that issues tend to come up along the way, that's why you will need to research its impact on the project and then write it down on an Issue Form. You can then begin performing the necessary tasks to solve it quickly. Closure Project Closure Report: When your project is complete, document all of the actions needed for a proper closure. This includes releasing teams and suppliers, equipment and materials. Post Project Review: After your project has been closed, you can review its success and document the results for your sponsor. That way, you can show that all of the objectives were met and that the project was delivered on time and within budget. SHIFT and your project's documentation SHIFT allows you to store in a single location all the documents that, as a project manager, you are going to develop for you eLearning project. Keeping your PM documents in a single spot is a great way to control access and versioning of those documents. To do this, simply go to the Course Documentation section and then choose the "Project Management Documents" category. After doing so, you will be able to upload into the system as many documents as you need, considering the recommendations we have provided in this article to plan and keep control of your project. By completing each of the documents suggested here, you can boost your eLearning project's chain of success. Take advantage of SHIFT's functionality as a document repository, this will allow you to store important documents in one place and also to keep your team and customers informed at all times.

Author: Andrea Cruz, Implementation and Support Manager ELearning products, such as SHIFT, are well structured tools that provide the end user with an interactive form of knowledge transfer. In order to assure your eLearning project's success, you must combine a powerful, collaborative authoring tool with an ideal strategy for its implementation. Experience and theory lead us to the same conclusion: implementing eLearning requires a series of essential activities and organizational changes which are considered "success factors" in your company's eLearning strategy. Planning is the starting point in the process of embracing the eLearning methodology, and it should begin by analyzing your company's business environment, which will help you decide whether or not you will need to be prepared and make changes in case there is any resistance or lack of motivation from your staff. There are several "key success factors" for the implementation resulting from proper planning: Corporate objective training Corporate culture training Management or department levels in charge of user training Start training with firm leaders Easy training access Policies and procedures Training on competencies and partner personal development eLearning internal marketing Follow-up Recognition Proper planning can go a long way when it comes to implementation, but remember that not all companies undergo the same situations, that's why whenever you are thinking of taking the leap towards eLearning be sure to have all your team on board advocating for organization's new training methodology and all the changes that might come with it.

Author: Andrea Cruz, Implementation and Support Manager Some of the activities we suggest for a successful eLearning strategy implementation include: 1. Corporate objective training: the implementation should have clear objectives, but they should be aligned with corporate objectives. Otherwise, the eLearning project could become an isolated effort, and achieving expected results would be impossible. This could even wipe out the project in the early stages 2.Corporate culture training: the organizational culture should be considered because it can be modified as a result of change, and employees could miss benefits and care provided by traditional methods. It is important to keep users posted on the new benefits resulting from eLearning and develop a contingency plan in case of change resistance. 3.Management or department levels in charge of user training: getting management involved in the training makes it easy to achieve greater employee commitment. Moreover, it is part of an overall planning that if it maintains a good communication with organizational objectives, it will become a more difficult chain to be broken. 4.Start training with firm leaders: (remember that leaders are not necessarily linked to positions but to their personality and characteristics since they are natural leaders followed by their colleagues). Preferably, these leaders should not belong to the training department. 5.Easy training access: occasionally, technological investment is needed to provide the organization with adequate training infrastructure and offer the best access to students. 6.Policies and Procedures: defining project boundaries, guidelines, and scope is related to the definition of policies and procedures used in training development. 7.Training on competencies and partner personal development: using eLearning training for the benefit of employee competencies and real needs helps the user enjoy the use of a new method, 8.eLearning internal marketing: depending on the organization, it is necessary to use different ways of marketing the methodology, especially when it is something new. eLearning marketing helps to create expectations about the training, motivate, and provide information on the topic. 9. Follow-up: Methodology use and acceptance should be evaluated. Moreover, there should be an assessment to determine whether users are transferring the knowledge resulting from the training to their jobs. 10.Recognition: it can be part of the methodology marketing, but it is important for the employee to feel motivated and be recognized as a result of the training. The recognition could be group-based, i.e., departmental, as to create healthy competition within the organization.

Author: Ing. Luis D. Arguello, MPM. The first step towards managing your eLearning project's finances is to define its budget and the budget's control process. It can be summarized as follows: Â Step 1: List the project´s financial expenses The first step when defining a financial plan and setting a project's budget, is to identify all of the different expenses that are likely to be incurred throughout its lifecycle. Typically, most eLearning projects spend the majority of their budget on labor but may also include purchasing, leasing, renting or contracting resources. Word of advice: take into account the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership). This TCO takes into account not only the initial development cost, but also maintenance and updates through the useful life of the project. Step 2: Quantify the financial expenses Once you have identified a detailed list of the project's expenses throughout its life cycle, the next step is to forecast the unit cost of each expense type listed. The unit cost is the rate of a single unit of a particular item. For instance, the unit cost for labor may be calculated as the price per hour supplied. Now that you have gone through steps 1 and 2 listed above and you have forecasted the total amount of people, materials and other expenses needed to develop the eLearning project, you have defined the its budget. A best practice will be to find back up funding. This is additional funding that, if needed, can be used to deliver the project. Step 3: Develop schedule of expenditures The expense schedule enables the project manager to calculate the total cost of undertaking the project on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. You can calculate it, based on your project's particular needs. This step consists on figuring out when the expenses will take place during the project´s timeline. By doing so, you can get an overview of your project´s cash flow, which tells you the amount of money you need at a given period of time during the its length. Step 4: Define the financial tracking process Now that you have an expenses schedule, you will need to define a process for monitoring and controlling it. This step is oriented to develop the mechanism that will track every expense, hopefully, on a periodic basis. If you can get your team to wait until an expense is approved before incurring in it, then you can control each expense more easily. In order to track the team´s operating cost, you will need to assign an hourly rate for each team member. The total amount charged for the hours undertaken by those resources must be shown in your schedule. Step 5: Track and manage Track, in real time (highly desirable) work effort accomplished versus your schedule. If you find that you are starting to spend more than you have budgeted, analyze the options you have to stay within budget: Re-forecast your expenses and present a new budget for approval. Start reducing costs immediately. This means spending less to get the same job done. Or alternatively, see if your sponsors will agree to a reduced scope for the project, so that you have less to produce. Start using your backup funding to get you through the project's crux. Cash flow management requires you to always have enough funds available to cover your spending over the months ahead and track your spending at least every week. SHIFT and your eLearning project's budget How can SHIFT help you manage your eLearning project's budget? At first, as a project manager you might think SHIFT is devoted to help instructional designers do their jobs better. However, SHIFT includes tools that will help you keep your project under budget: -SHIFT will give you visibility for the whole development process. -SHIFT will dramatically reduce your TCO (Total Cost of Ownership), driving down the variability in maintenance and update costs to manageable and predictable level: no hidden maintenance costs. -SHIFT allows you to assign tasks to different team members of your project and keep track of their progress within development environment. You will also keep track of the status of each task (really helpful in closing up all pending items before publishing a course). -SHIFT will give you real time status on each piece of work to be done in order to finish your project on time and on budget.

Author: Juan Carlos Vidal, eLearning Resource Manager Templates allow organizations to produce courses in a small fraction of the time it would take to do traditionally. According to our experience on more than 1600 courses developed with SHIFT, using SHIFT's templates saves at least 50% on labor costs and up to 75% on development schedules, consistently. There are several misconceptions around using templates. Top on the list is that templates reduce creativity: quite the opposite I think: having access a very large library of templates gives the Instructional Designer the tremendous flexibility of being able to choose from a very diverse, best-of-breed set of preconfigured interactions. It also gives our designers access to previously complex or too-expensive to develop interactions. Templates actually increase flexibility, they're easy to update, and they provide consistency across the enterprise. They can also reduce costs, training time, and reduce variability due to programming bugs. Templates allow our organization to: Incorporate best practices and effectiveness to the learning process: each new template goes through several effectiveness and usability tests before they're released to the production process. Its designing process incorporates best practices in usability from the ground up. Reduce error by exhaustive technical tests: before a template is released to the production process, it goes through several tests in different platforms and conditions in order to eliminate programming bugs. Be dynamic, by constant improvement and updates: templates can be improved regularly to meet technological and instructional requirements as well as the client's needs. These are easily tracked and updated. Templates mean results for our organization: dramatically reduce costs, time to market and most significantly, give the Instructional Designer more power, more choices, and much more independence.