I work for a large corporate company in the U.S. There are over 29,000 employees in 20 states so we have implemented a networked multimedia system to supply some of the training needs. After in-house analysis (including needs assessment) and high level design stage, we publish an RFP. Projects are then turned over to a vendor. Typically vendors have their own project managers, I act as project manager/instructional designer liaisoning with the vendor, looking out for the company's interest, ensuring that the instructional integrity is maintained, liaisoning with the subject matter experts, troubleshooting for the vendor, reviewing scripts, arranging for assets to be recorded, photographed, and digitized. I also arrange in house evaluation and testing at all stages in the project. Writing this all down makes it sound like it is very organized which it mostly is, but the reality of deadlines and the myriad of tasks that need to be accomplished make days feel very disorganized sometimes.
Teamwork and Communication: Teamwork and communication are certainly keys but very difficult to maintain week in and week out on long term projects with diverse groups of people who sometimes have very different agendas and very different personalities. And that is just the production team, then there are the various stakeholders and sponsors. Team members have other work demands, personal commitments (including maternity leave!), family lives, vacations, etc.
Skills: You might want to do it all yourself but I do not know of anyone who has all the skills required: Instructional Design, Graphics, Project Management, Programming. I have worked in teams in TV production for most of my working life. In video though most people are versed in the same language and the skills required of team members are already well defined. This is not the case in the production of multimedia, a still developing area. Programmers often do not have design skills (and can be responsible for the layout of graphics, choosing fonts, etc.) This is not meant to damn programmers, they do wonderful things that I cannot. And, this works two ways of course. I wanted to make the text in an instruction box flash after five seconds, vendor cries change of scope, a week's delay, extra cost--it's just a bit of flashing text isn't it? But we are all learning. I reflect on Tuckman's group dynamics model to help me through these tricky times: Forming, Norming, Storming, and Performing.
Resources: Generally money is not a problem, as long as it does not exceed the proposed budget!! But even that can be dealt with if there are good reasons. Personnel resources however can be stretched by aggressive deadlines, but are able (not always willing however) to buy our way out of serious problems.
Projects: In the last year I have been involved with three projects. The first was to be a conversion of a series of twelve programs (about 20 hours instruction) made originally for another company. It was set up very badly--in the form it was in, it should never have seen the light of day. The vendor and the manufacturer (a very very large U.S. corporation) had little experience of developing multimedia and no instructional design skills. On top of this we had our own vendor and internal client. It was a mess and it got worse. Eventually we withdrew but it took months, damaged our department (instructional design) because the internal client did not have a program (however good or bad--you know the "just check it off the list" mentality) to do the training they wanted. A lot of money was wasted in the process. I heard later that many bugs surfaced in the program and they were unable to get it to run on the chosen platform. I still tremble when I hear the word "conversion."
A second project went very well. Met its budget, came in a month a head of its schedule, exactly as scripted. It was a smaller scale project (just 20 minutes). Instructionally I was very pleased with it. It meets its objectives and is considered quite successful, even though it has not yet reached its full potential. Shades of implementation issues.
The project I am currently working on will, yes WILL finish on October 25. It has slipped two weeks beyond its original deadline. It is an annual certification and will take between two to five hours. Instructionally, the design works well. Most of the projects we tackle fall at the prescriptive end of the spectrum, but this does not mean page turners, something we desperately aim to avoid. I guess under current parlance it could be called a "situated" certification (oh all right a day in the life). This project has been innovative for the company as we have developed with the vendor a program where we can change and text, sound, and pictures, even question types in the program through the use of an external database. This was required because the content is not as stable as we would normally require for IMM. The rule book we are working from could be called dynamic or a living document. The structure though has had tremendous advantages in allowing us to change content already and allows us to easily incorporate photos and sound changes without involving the vendor.
The program will be for 12,500 employees and is undergoing extensive testing. Vendors do have difficulty adapting to networked systems from stand alone machines. I am also continually surprised by the content errors that still surface, despite extensive evaluation and review of the script and beta with experts and novices, there are still errors. Most of the program is turning out as expected. Some bits are better, some less good. Overall it does not reach the high ideals that one or two of us had at the beginning, but I think we were getting carried away. Curbing some of these ideas was necessary to get the project done.
Getting this far has not always been easy of course. We've had our fair share of bumpy moments. The "storming" stage was delayed and divided the team for a while. The implementation of this program is of course going to be another issue--a heavily unionized, largely computer illiterate workforce, with low reading skills. How well we have dealt with these should determine how successful we are, and despite a lot of high level support, there are still powerful forces within the company that would like to see the whole venture fail.
I can tell that others share these problems.