Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design

This week, my  task has been to allocate the resources and estimate the costs associated with an ID project. Fortunately, many resources exist to help with these estimates for project managers as they begin to manage ID projects, and the ID community is always eager to help fellow Instructional Designers, if you know where to look.  Here are three resources that would be useful in estimating the costs, effort, and/or activity durations associated with ID projects. 

At Don Clark's "Big Dog & Little Dog's  Performance Juxtaposition" website http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/costs.html,  instructional designers and ID project managers
can find a wealth of information and resources to assist them in almost any phase of an ID project.  One of these resources in that of Estimating Costs and Time in Instructional Design projects.  The resource covers budgeting for learning activities and the difficulties in doing so as well as providing guidelines or estimates for various training costs.  The next category includes average design and development times for creating one hour of training.  Mr. Clark does caution that these are just estimates to get one started on any ID budget.  Final estimates provided include development times per The eLearning Guild from 2002 and instructor prep time.  This site is definitely a go to site if one is unfamiliar with budgeting for ID projects.  The estimates will assist any ID Project Manager in where to begin building a project plan.

Another site with an article written by Christpher Pappas which looked useful for an ID Project Manager can be found at http://elearningindustry.com/5-important-factors-for-estimating-an-elearning-course-development-time.  The "5 Important Factors for Estimating an eLearning Course Development Time" goes over the essentials in determining the project needs including the ID model to be used, establishing the project to fit a deadline,  looking at the complexity of the project and materials required, types of media needed and any learning technologies and hardware devices required.  As this is a more recent site (April 2013) he discusses the use of rapid cloud based authoring tools like Adobe Captivate, Articulate, or Lectora to decrease eLearning course development time.  

He also embeds several links to additional research within the article which could prove useful as well including an ASTD article by Karl M. Kapp And Robyn Defelice http://www.astd.org/Publications/Newsletters/Learning-Circuits/Learning-Circuits-Archives/2009/08/Time-to-Develop-One-Hour-of-Training.  The article by Kapp includes survey responses back in 2003 from instructional designers using rapid development software and the time it takes to produce specific types of training.  These may be overestimates in today's advance rapid development software but it would definitely give a place to start.  The end of the Pappas article provides 7 additional links for helpful resources to assist one in the estimate of eLearning Course Development Time and two additional links for eLearning ROI Calculators and traditional to eLearning conversion tips.