Estimating Development of Instructor-led Learning Materials

The features of instructor-led learning materials, and thus the design and development estimates, vary according to whether the course is to be delivered by one person who is an subject matter expert or by many different people who have some expertise in the subject matter. Obviously you will need more "scripting" of the presentation to enable consistent training delivery if many different people will be used to facilitate the course.

Here are the five common products that comprise instructor-led training. Each product would have it's own standards and features. For accurate estimating you will want to estimate each product separately.

• A Participant Workbook
• A Facilitator Guide
• Presentation materials including overhead transparencies, handouts, exercises, games, maps, equipment, etc.
• A Participant Assessment and method for scoring and analysis.
• A Training Evaluation Form and method for analysis.

The minimum components required for presentations by a single subject matter expert would be a participant guide, overhead transparencies and a course evaluation form.

If you do not clearly define the components of the product that your client desires, you cannot estimate accurately. In this case, if the client actually wanted all five components, and you estimated on the minimum components, your estimates could be seriously inadequate.

A typical rough estimate for instructor-led materials is 60 hours of design and development for each hour of presentation.

A serious estimating mistake is made if you try to apply the instructor-led rough estimate for any other type of media delivery. You will seriously underestimate. Instructor -led is the most basic and cheapest form of training.

In the same manner, the 60 hours required for one delivery hour of instructor-led materials has been proven to be roughly accurate in thousands of projects , so that use of a smaller number of hours per delivery hours will probably result in serious underestimation for instructor-led materials.

Why would you do that, you may ask? Answer - to please someone who WANTS it to take less time or less money to develop. You may win the contract or get project approval with a lower estimate, but in the end, it is still likely to take 60 hours per hour. Your project will be over budget and most likely will not achieve deadlines. You may end up bearing the extra costs yourself, so take your estimating seriously.

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